Tuesday, September 1, 2009

baby submission

It's been a quiet time lately with Chapiro, my midget is so frustrated by the flies that I've just been consolidating some clicker work in the stable. Today was damp and cooler, finally hooray!! So my baby (well he's 2 months off  four actually) went back to work in the school today.
It's as if there is a higher 'order' to things in a weird way, as if all the mistakes I've made with Moo  (oh and of course all the other generous equines who have suffered me) were sent especially to prepare the way for Chapiro.
In any case he has picked up all his basic ground skills really well. We started off with just standing around and doing nothing, everytime he stands calm and not mugging me he gets a click/treat to write that lesson firmly in his mind. We back up from voice, body language and/or signal and the same with walking on and stopping. Today we walked on and then onto a circle on the lunge (easy peasy on the right rein, somewhat more tricky for him on the left) and  we tried trotting on the lunge which was pretty successful for his first time.
To finish we knotted the end of the rope onto the other side of the headcollar and (he is sooo small) I can lean over with him under my armpit and ground ride him; just walk on and halt but he was really accepting.

I've been taking it very slowly with him but it will definitely pay off in the end. I do really like him now and I'm looking forward to our future.

6 comments:

Claire said...

midget indeed! he's hardly that, LOL.

glad it's going well with him

Mandeigh said...

yeh...sounds like you are really making progress.

Its probably about time we had more pictures ;-)

Di said...

It sounds really exciting! I feel the same way with Remy. Can't wait to see you working with him.

HorseOfCourse said...

Pictures, please!

trudi said...

erm, been a bit bad on the 'photo front...I'll get to it, or maybe vid ;-)

allhorsestuff said...

Sounds encouraging indeed...love to view the progress in stills or video too!
KK