February 14, 2011

Boot Camp 2011

Enforced Boot Camp began today.
DAY 1 of my Captivity

First thing on the plan after work today was to disassemble the large oval I had made with my round pen panels to be reassembled into a round pen again.  I needed to shrink the area of our working space so she can't get up too much of a head of steam since the footing is still a little wet out here.  All through this process she was cantering in an around me, jumping up into the air in acrobatic movement, doing roll backs mid--air.  Sounds lovely doesn't it?

NOT

So back into some ground work.  I figured she had a good hour of free cantering on her own and she had worked up a pretty good sweat all by herself.  Once I had our area fixed I took her in there and turned her loose.  She cantered about two laps each direction before I got her mind back to me and then things went really well.  She joined up, pivoted when I raised my hands, backed up when I backed up, stopped when I stopped all off line.  I could not get her to sidepass off line though, so that is something to work on in future session. 

We have tentatively scheduled our evaluation/clinic with the trainer for this coming Saturday if things go well.  I'm hoping I can manage to do a clinic this month, and maybe another one next monthy prior to actual competition season.  So we are going to amp up our ground work this week so that it will be a non-issue I'm hoping, or at least a smaller issue when we get there.  I'd like the focus to turn quickly to gait transitions under saddle.  The quicker the better!  But I will go with what the man says, that is what I'm paying him for.

I did have some really bad news today.  Ever since I've lived out here I've had access to the 65 acres behind our 25 acre property.  This gave me 90 acres to train on which was incredible.  The 65 acres has been sold to a family with 13 children.  My stomach tightens thinking of the magnitude of possible 4-wheelers out here soon.  It is a terrible loss because I could always train here for free if I wasn't in a position to haul away from home.  I'm going to have to really think outside of the box as that was the hill country that helped us get ready for the big hills at Clark each year.  I'm so bummed , and totally whiney....about it.  I'm pretty much limited to our acreage now and it is single track with very little place to really move out.
~E.G.


4 comments:

  1. Big bummer! But can totally relate to not having a lot of space to train where I keep my horse. Except when I lived in Maine, I always had to trailer to go anywhere with real mileage.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I wouldn't necessarily assume that your new neighbors = bad news. Perhaps they are horse people.

    Also, the presence of 4-wheelers isn't a bad thing either. If your horse isn't good around them, it's an EXCELLENT training opportunity to get her accustomed to working where there are motors and some chaos. Because gawd knows, it's never a bad idea to train within chaos so you're ready when you meet it in real life!

    I'm fortunate that my horses both lived for years on the local tribal reservation, where BIG BOOM fireworks are legal 365 days/year, and people are often doing odd things with big earth-moving machines, trampolines, shotguns and barking dogs (often simultaneously). You can't BUY training opportunities like that.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hello :-)

    I've given you a Blogger Award, please visit my page to collect it.
    http://walkingwithhorses.blogspot.com/

    Abbie

    ReplyDelete
  4. Jacke, Good work with Phebes in the round pen! And from your sidebar, it looks like you are already doing some training! I'm sorry to hear about the new neighbors. Maybe they will be horse people. But if not (silver lining, hopefully) maybe this will enable you to find some other new places to take Phebes to for training, with even better conditions for her than those neighboring acres! Fingers crossed for you!

    ReplyDelete