I get to see my horses on this farm way more than in SD , I think its the flatness and the fact that the paddocks wrap around the house....grin. In any case with two turned out together in a mini (that's pronounced "my-knee" for the uninitiated!) I get to see interactions, normal horsey ones. The kind we forget all about living as segregated as we did in CA. This morning i wish i had my camcorder out. Boo was having cuervo execute a perfect turn on the haunch both directions at a walk. Both with their ears forward. They had just finished a good mutual back scratch( I know! Boo letting some other horse lips touch her!) and Boo turned him one full round right, then one full round left, then he backed out of her grasp and walked away. Very cool! And done is such harmony. No tail swish, no ear pin, no worried eye....it motivates me to become better in my fluency of the language of horse. Where there is understanding, there is perfect compliance. Johns mantra" If he knew it he would do it!" So true dahling!
Way back in the first posting I mentioned my trailer loading with Cuervo,( the one practice before we took off that included the trailer itself.) and how cool it was. Even though all we accomplished trying to load in the back of my trailer was two feet in before i put him up. Well, let me tell you what i learned about my little boy. First of all he tried from the second we got up there until we where done. To top it off, we had no issues (except one, thunder storm in Tucumcari, came out under the chest bar after a huge crack of thunder, good thing he is short, he missed his withers entirely and caught the top of his butt) with the trailer the rest of the trip. Was i worried about this, not practicing with the trailer, not at all, we have mad leading skills so i knew the added distraction of the trailer would be a non issue. Now am i going to get him so good that i can sit on top of my trailer and ask him to load up...well maybe ill start from the ground and after a couple of beers or a nice mojito try for something higher! grin. But the answer is "yes" i am. Its hot here so i have all summer for ground work, and I'm going to incorporate some really fun stuff that ill get on tape for YouTube. So stand by on that front.
Now back to the other thing I learned about my Cuervy. He showed me a few nice levades during our trailer practice, I was using the rope halter to load him in. As most of you know he is my bitless boy. Anyway the levades happened during a "come along" type tension on the rope. He was not pulling back or trying in anyway to get away. He was in fact not moving at all except for holding both front feet off the ground in a very controlled manner. If i asked him to move from his hip his feet went forward ( and several different directions grin) but with pressure from the rope halter, which is mild and was less than a pound he went up. I even did this with out the trailer and got the same results. What does this mean, well several things, first and fore most John always said to teach a horse to rear on command you can use a tie down or other head restraining device( isn't that scary to know? and people ride in these things...) anyhoo, I stored it away for future levade practice....but it also made me think of the setting I had my rambo bitless bridle on. I have it on the medium control where it crosses under the jaw on both reins. I started there not wanting the "extreme control" option as Cuervo is sensitive but not trusting the side pull option to be clear enough to teach a good stop. Well, silly me! As usual the human reasoning is flawed. What I should have done is start on the mildest option and gone from there. What the "levade" showed me is that, I have given cuervo the lip service of being sensitive but due to my own lack of confidence in the "experiment" of going all bitless beginning to end, I didn't give him the opportunity to teach me how sensitive and responsive he could be. So we go to the side pull option as soon as we start back up working in the bridle, and Ill keep you all posted.
Here's the thing that i wish all my horsey friends could have seen, the fact that, in a trailer loading session, we got some good trailer loading practice( and some of you would have been disappointed, because he did not get on all the way....) but we also learned some really valuable lessons in other areas of Cuervos learning. That's the crux of it really, is to not be so focused on what we are hell bent on achieving that day, to be AGENDALESS (a quote from Harry Whitney) so to speak and open to what the horse can TEACH US about himself. In this way we can achieve that perfect turn on the haunch, just like Boo gets him to do in the field. Its learning the nuance of the language. One step closer to becoming fluent......
Way back in the first posting I mentioned my trailer loading with Cuervo,( the one practice before we took off that included the trailer itself.) and how cool it was. Even though all we accomplished trying to load in the back of my trailer was two feet in before i put him up. Well, let me tell you what i learned about my little boy. First of all he tried from the second we got up there until we where done. To top it off, we had no issues (except one, thunder storm in Tucumcari, came out under the chest bar after a huge crack of thunder, good thing he is short, he missed his withers entirely and caught the top of his butt) with the trailer the rest of the trip. Was i worried about this, not practicing with the trailer, not at all, we have mad leading skills so i knew the added distraction of the trailer would be a non issue. Now am i going to get him so good that i can sit on top of my trailer and ask him to load up...well maybe ill start from the ground and after a couple of beers or a nice mojito try for something higher! grin. But the answer is "yes" i am. Its hot here so i have all summer for ground work, and I'm going to incorporate some really fun stuff that ill get on tape for YouTube. So stand by on that front.
Now back to the other thing I learned about my Cuervy. He showed me a few nice levades during our trailer practice, I was using the rope halter to load him in. As most of you know he is my bitless boy. Anyway the levades happened during a "come along" type tension on the rope. He was not pulling back or trying in anyway to get away. He was in fact not moving at all except for holding both front feet off the ground in a very controlled manner. If i asked him to move from his hip his feet went forward ( and several different directions grin) but with pressure from the rope halter, which is mild and was less than a pound he went up. I even did this with out the trailer and got the same results. What does this mean, well several things, first and fore most John always said to teach a horse to rear on command you can use a tie down or other head restraining device( isn't that scary to know? and people ride in these things...) anyhoo, I stored it away for future levade practice....but it also made me think of the setting I had my rambo bitless bridle on. I have it on the medium control where it crosses under the jaw on both reins. I started there not wanting the "extreme control" option as Cuervo is sensitive but not trusting the side pull option to be clear enough to teach a good stop. Well, silly me! As usual the human reasoning is flawed. What I should have done is start on the mildest option and gone from there. What the "levade" showed me is that, I have given cuervo the lip service of being sensitive but due to my own lack of confidence in the "experiment" of going all bitless beginning to end, I didn't give him the opportunity to teach me how sensitive and responsive he could be. So we go to the side pull option as soon as we start back up working in the bridle, and Ill keep you all posted.
Here's the thing that i wish all my horsey friends could have seen, the fact that, in a trailer loading session, we got some good trailer loading practice( and some of you would have been disappointed, because he did not get on all the way....) but we also learned some really valuable lessons in other areas of Cuervos learning. That's the crux of it really, is to not be so focused on what we are hell bent on achieving that day, to be AGENDALESS (a quote from Harry Whitney) so to speak and open to what the horse can TEACH US about himself. In this way we can achieve that perfect turn on the haunch, just like Boo gets him to do in the field. Its learning the nuance of the language. One step closer to becoming fluent......
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