Schooling Ruby

 The weather did an abrupt about face- from hot to heavy rain and thunderstorms. Welcome to monsoon June. It rather disrupted my horse plans, but I did get a couple of sessions of ground work in. I wanted to try her out on obstacles on the ground to gauge how she will be for riding them. We have a local arena that's really big into the cowboy challenge events and I am hoping that it's something Ruby and I can do. Because it's pretty boring to just ride the pastures here!

Prior to that I had the blue tubs in the middle of the pen and led her over them- the usual evasions to the side to avoid stepping over them before she allowed as how she was ok with actually stepping over them. 

She goes around with her nose stuck  out, and I worked her a bunch until she stretched  down and relaxed.

Nice extension but not a nice expression.  (Side note- I have called 2 farriers, still waiting for someone to call me back to get her feet done. )

More relaxed but not what I consider to be soft. I think she will be a work in progress for a while. 

Afterwards I had her tied to the trailer (which has been parked, unused except as a tack room for the last month)  and all of a sudden she panicked and pulled back. That is very unlike her, she is very good standing tied. Upon investigation I discovered this: 

Swallow's nest in the horse trailer! I think the mama bird dive bombed Ruby. I can't have my mare being worried about being attacked when she's tied there so I checked it out- there were eggs that hadn't hatched so I made the executive decision to remove the nest. 

 I'm sure the mama bird will be able to build another nest somewhere, just not in my trailer!

Next day our morning session was ground work again, this time I set up some posts in an L shape for her. She hasn't been yielding her hip when I ask (riding) so this was a way to give her a reason to move her hip over. I took one of my spurs, which I haven't ridden her with yet, and pressed it where my leg would go. It took 3 tries of using a fair amount of pressure, then the next times all I had to do was just softly touch her there and she moved over nicely, each side. Once we got that figured I worked her in the L . Walk through, back through. A couple reminders with the spur for the hip over and she got it every time. 

We also did some exercises with the rope and the slicker. 

She was not in the least concerned about the rope dragging around her hind legs. As far as the slicker went, she was fine with it too, being draped over her butt, her neck and over her head. She has this funny thing she does where if she doesn't like something, she just turns her head and looks away.  If I don't look at it it doesn't exist.  She did that with the slicker when I presented it to her on her right side, so I just held it there until she turned back and looked at it before I put it on her back. 

The other thing I worked on was the gate. The other day when I rode her through the gate, she a) wouldn't give her hip so I could handle the gate properly, and b) rushed through it. So I worked on leading her through. First try I let her pick the pace to see what she would do, and she hurried through. So then I asked her to go through one step at a time. 

I was happy with that! After that I took her for a walk and let her look at everything- trees, game trails the mailbox, and even the poplar fluff that is laying on the spruce boughs looking like snow. 

My goal is to put her through her paces to see if she is going to be a safe trail horse for me. Some folks think that a trail horse is on the low end of the spectrum as far as training goes, after all they are not being asked to perform the way a competitive arena horse is, but there is a lot that goes into the making of a good trail horse. You are literally trusting them with your life in situations that include dangerous terrain, wild animals and unexpected encounters. That foundation of trust has to be on both sides. So because Ruby is a new-to-me horse, we have a lot to learn together. I want to know how she thinks and reacts and she has to know that she can trust me. 

Journey on!