Peeling back the layers -day 1

 This last week has been one of discovery for me and Sophie. There were some things I suspected about her that were confirmed when Shayla started working with her; she gave her three good sessions in the round pen that pinpointed the holes in her training- or, should I say the lack of training. 

Day one was mostly about finding out where she needed the most work. The first level is her tightness of body. I mentioned a while ago about how Sophie flinches when being touched; that issue is also part of her unwillingness to stand still when being brushed or saddled . So to work with that, Shayla  worked on desensitizing her to touch, continually popping her with her hand until the hardness left her muscles; taking the saddle pad and throwing it up on her and all over her. It took a while for Sophie to relax. 

For this issue, I now have built into my program for her, making sure that we deal with the tightness before moving on to any next step. Which means not saddling her when she's tight- more on that when we get to day 3. 

In the round pen, on the longe line Sophie was trying to do things on her terms; especially trying to turn back and change directions when being sent around to the right.  Also, she doesn't have the concept of a verbal whoa built into her automatic reactions; Shayla had to take ahold of her when her verbal and body language whoa was ignored. The other thing during longeing was when Shayla brought her in to stop in the center, that she has no concept of personal space (except her own) and got pushy.

Tight body

For these issues, it's a matter of just being consistent with what we are asking of her, not allowing her to turn back and change eyes and  building a good solid whoa, as well as reminding her to not crowd me. 

Getting it figured

Then there was the back up; she pretty much ignored any subtle or soft cues for a back up, so once again Shayla had to get big to get the message across. The other side of this, is that Sophie will back up when you walk up to her, instead of standing still, so to remedy this we ask for forward movement even if it means a sharp pull on the lead rope. The first few times this happened, Sophie threw up her head and half reared, so this is definitely something that needs to be dealt with. Eventually she stepped forward on a loose lead. 

The next thing was bridling and longeing her off the bridle, as well as bitting her up to each side. This is to help her find how to be soft in the face. Sophie showed a lot of resistance, especially to the right. When I trail rode her a couple weeks ago, I found that she was easy to ride on a loose rein, but if I had to put contact on the bit for any reason she was what I call hard mouthed- no give to the bit, just pushing into the bridle and tossing her head. 

As we progressed through the lesson, we felt that her training level was about what we would expect from a two year old who was just starting in training. But with an 11 year old mare, she isn't as mentally fragile as a young horse, so we could push her a little harder as needed. I feel that her original training didn't include a lot of finesse, and that she wasn't asked for any softness during the time she was ridden by her former owner, so all this is new to her.

As far as her personality goes,  this is what we concluded:

Closed minded/tough minded

Dominant but not confidant

Pushy but not brave

Owning this mare is a learning curve for me. I am so used to the more willing, easy to train type of horses that this is good for me to have to learn ways of building confidence and connection with Sophie. I feel that she is a good horse who just hasn't had the foundation to really shine.