Val 4/6

Today Val worked in the round pen for the first time. We worked on Lunging 101, working on walking, trotting, stopping and "getting out" (making the circle bigger) on command. As expected, he was fascinated by his environment and had trouble focusing on me vs the cute friesian mare and the TB gelding temporarily locked up in the dry lot behind the round pen.

I worked with him on bridling quietly (needs work LOL!...he needs to learn how to NOT turn it into "how can I chew on the leather and head-wrestle with my handler" time!) and then took him in to the round pen, walking him around "orienting" him to it in BOTH directions (I'm a big proponent of walking both directions with a horse when entering an unfamiliar/new workspace until they relax), introducing him to the tarp outside the pen, reviewing his "head down" and "right turn" commands to keep him at my side quietly and not jumping in my lap.

We worked on him following my cues to send him forward off of his center of balance and connecting to the names of the gaits to the gaits I wanted. As expected, he spent most of his time trying to chew on the lunge line, grabbing it and trying to take it from me (I'm working on verbal "NO!" cues to get him to drop whatever he's decided to put in his mouth at the moment, especially lead lines, lunge lines, bridle leather, halters etc....). He refused to walk further than 10 feet from me in the circle and was very distracted by the mounting block in the center of the ring. He spent a lot of time standing in one place and completely tuning me out to stare where he was interested in and pretending to be blind, deaf, and made of stone when asked to move on. None of this was a surprise, as pretending to ignore your requests is his favorite evasion tactic. He also didn't want to move forward in a trot going to the right (this is normal, we don't lead horses from the righthand side, so they tend to not lunge well to the right either. This also tends to be most horse's weaker direction overall.)

Since Fran had told me she free lunged him often, I went ahead and "set him free" to ask him to trot out, just to get the forward movement I was looking for. He was happy and drifted directly to the outside of the round pen, stayed out, and trotted, cantered and bucked his little heart out. He started "testing" (this will get worse before it gets better) by trying to stop as he went by the side of the pen that Dolly (my mare) and Hoolie were. He would stop and try to talk to her versus continue on the circle. Again, expected. What WASN'T expect was Dolly helping me out. I almost fell over laughing when she promptly rejected his interest by pinning her ears and CHARGING the round pen. Boy, did he look surprised and moved fast! Thanks, Dolly! She'll break him of that habit REAL fast!!!! I bet he believes me now when I told him she wasn't interested in little blank and white furry pawed horses :-) Val thought I was kidding......

I walked him over some poles at the end and he was excellent. Overall, his behavior had much improved from the day before and he was "back" to where he had been. He just hates being cooped up and doesn't appreciate the high winds. Don't blame him. So do I!