Day 2
Foundation Class. Fun with Flags (if you ever watched Big Bang Theory, you may have just chuckled at that title hee hee)
The purpose of this clinic, (to me, it seemed), was to get to the horses feet. By getting to its feet, you are getting to its mind, and by getting to its mind, its attention is then put on you.
It’s one thing to move its feet, but a lot of the horses were quite slow moving. By using the flags as an extension of our arm, we were able to get them to be a little snappier with them. We used Yonka as an example for this, as when we would ask him to back up from the ground, he would do it, but he wouldn’t pick up his feet. As Trina put it, by the tracks he left with his feet, you could plant a garden. By using the flag, and using more energy, he was able to utilize his body, pick up his feet instead of dragging them.
We also used the flag, not to desensitize them, but to make them comfortable with things around their body. I don’t like the term desensitize them, as I feel that leads to dullness, but using the flag around their body made them more aware of their surroundings and be able to deal with it. Hard to explain, sorry. An exercise we did, was we all traded horses and rubbed the flag on each new horse we got. It also taught us what levels of feel it took for each different horse to be responsive. Some horses were cool with the flag all over, some didn’t like it on one leg, or up by its eye, so on and so forth. By learning feel with different horses, our goal was to pass on the horse to the next person a wee bit better than when we got them.
- Flag Work.jpg (147.81 KiB) Viewed 20222 times
Both my horses did very well.
Horsemanship Day 2
We moved to the indoor arena for this, 26 horses in an indoor. It was hot. We actually brought Tuddy in for this part of the clinic as well, as we used him for some flag exercises. More on that to come. I think 23 horses were being ridden and 3 were used for ground work purposes – Tuddy being one of them.
Again, we just added on to what we worked on the day before. I had a lot of fun with this class. We did a lot group work.
Again – trying to find and feel our horse’s feet on horseback was difficult for some of us. Someone like me, who had a big horse, I could get him to move his feet over, but I couldn’t get a full cross over of them to save my life even though I had thought they had. Hence the learning how to feel. I was not the only one who had this issue, so, Trina put us in groups of five. One horse in the middle, and the other four horses created a box around that horse. The rider in the middle had to move their horse over, either by moving the front end, or disengaging the hind end, a quarter turn, so that they turned and faced a new horse “wall” each turn. When you stopped at your new wall, that rider would lean over and rub that horse’s face and love it up. This exercise also helped those horses that didn’t like to be crowded, or got grouchy with other horses.
Tuddy was used in this class for the riders that had horses that were ok with being ridden while the rider had a flag in its hand. These riders would walk up to Tuddy, and then gently rub him all over with the flag and then move on. Again, no one walked up to him perfectly straight, so the riders had to move the feet to get them straight so they could get up to Tuddy. Tuddy was a champ. He figured out right quick that he wasn’t being chased, and that the multi colored flags were okay.
Final exercise to help with feeling and moving feet and social skills – all 22 ridden horses were lined up along the long side of the arena and everyone had to side pass to the left, and then side pass to the right. We didn’t have any wrecks, but we had a few traffic jams and a lot of laughs!
- Horsemanship Wall.jpg (140.67 KiB) Viewed 20222 times
Whew – that was a busy day.
And yes, pictures!
But no worries, a foresee a trip to the tack store for a new helmet in the near future!
I am also taking Yonka to this same clinic, as I will be riding him. Hopefully, that helps Tuddy settle in as his bully/buddy will be there too. 
)