Arya has been doing well under saddle. We have our routine; ground work, sometimes a quick "kicks and giggles" jaunt on the lunge line before I get on and we go to work. On the ground, her ability to go left or right when asked has improved immensely; she no longer runs me the heck over when turning to circle going right, which is much improved from the accidental feeling near body checks I'd get from her when doing that work initially.
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| Kitted up to ground work, lunge and ride all in one! |
She's much more of a thinker and much less of a runner than I was expecting; she has lately tested me (or that's how it feels) by slowing down or pausing and not immediately moving forward when nudged. I kick her on and so far, she hasn't threatened to rear because of this, so that's great. I think this is also a side effect of me struggling to figure out how to teach her to bend, and it comes out when I introduce new concepts.
The bending thing has been a struggle; she wants to travel totally bent left when going right under saddle. And I want to take my inside hand across her neck to lever her head over to the "right side". And I want to pull, even though she only sometimes understands the whole giving to pressure thing. Bad Ashley!
We had some good progress yesterday, but the theme comes and goes. I think what my next steps need to be is an emphasis on going right, and installing the tools I need to feel comfortable going that way; the brakes and any sort of lateral push I have with my leg going left tend to go haywire when going right. We need to do it on the ground, and we need to do it at the walk going right until we can trot and canter and do them, too.
I've been trying hard not to rush her, but we have been doing some more tiny jumps and trot poles. She wiggles a lot and they definitely are scary or stressful to her, despite her being jumped at the rescue before she came home to me. I haven't even given her a real jump yet - just a "cross rail" set up on the feet of my jump standards. I think we need to bond and build up her skillset on the flat before we really do any jumping; she's game, but clearly doesn't know her job yet and that makes her uncomfortable.
What I would love to hear from others, is... what are your favorite exercises for working a green horse or OTTB? I'm struggling to not just go in circles picking at her until she does it right. Send help!
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| Shhh don't tell her stuff she will make me work |
lol turning right is hard for ottbs! charlie totally agrees! also i know that feeling of hating just constantly circling lol... but sometimes that's just kinda the way with greenies. with charlie i tend to ride a lot of figures to keep me from always picking at him (circles of varying sizes/spirals, serpentines, diagonals, half turns, etc etc - sometimes even practicing low level dressage tests just to play). my trainer also encouraged me to avoid riding him on the rail. even if i was going up the long side she wanted me staying ~3 feet off the rail so that i was responsible for our straightness instead of relying on the fence. we did a lot of simple stuff with ground poles too. even just a pole strewn about here or there. not a big deal, just another thing to point at. cones are fun too - weaving around them and whatnot. fun easy stuff that changes the visual landscape and gives the horse something *different* to think about even as we still just work on the same old fundamental stuff.
ReplyDeleteI should totally plan a dive into your blog to the early Charlie days to read up on what you were up to. Arya seems to think that ground poles = snakes and tries to nope out of them with a popped shoulder last night... so I think I'm really realizing that she's super different from Bailey despite their similar personalities. Arya doesn't quite have the natural curiosity and "Ok, fun!" response that B had in her greenie years. It's definitely different, and it's hard for my brain to adjust!
Deletelol so fun fact i just clicked back myself to reread some old posts (starting basically in sept 2016). and just came back to comment exactly on that whole ground pole thing. bc yea charlie was pretty easy about them compared to many (many) other ottbs - but we also introduced them pretty easily too. i did a TON of in hand stuff with charlie. hand walked a couple laps together before every ride, including the occasional halt and back up, and the occasional jog in hand. just getting charlie focusing on me, and looking to me for cues from the ground. we also hand walked and jogged in hand over every pole first before i would ride (esp for multiple poles in a row) so that he could meet them on his own terms. maybe that would help Arya process things at her own speed instead of getting stressed?
DeleteMy friend's OTTB was stupid about ground poles for AGES, so a clinician had her trot him up to them, calmly walk over them, and then trot away. They kept doing that until the walk transition turned into a half halt. I think she had to do it for about two more weeks until he was just like "oh nvm, those aren't snakes." Same with canter poles I think, but establishing a steady trot to them helped a TON.
DeleteI got lucky in that Spring came with a fairly solid dressage background - but we are still building her strength back up as she was so underweight and out of shape when I got her, so a lot of focus on things like bending and trot poles under saddle (hills would be better but CEC is lacking hills). I'm also trying to incorporate work on the lunge with Vienna reins to encourage her to carry herself, but she's so much fun to ride that I rarely want to skip a day in favor of ground work!
ReplyDeleteI am also lacking hills :( I've found ground work to be kind of interesting so far - I do a lot of it to kind of... establish dominance? since she challenges me so often (or tries to give me the finger and do whatever she wants) and I think it's helping us bond a bit more quickly. It's definitely more fun to ride, though!
DeleteI don't have any good tips but I wanted to say that I freaking love your browband haha! Henry gets really crooked to the right and I've been adding lots of circles and pole courses to keep him thinking and bending... seems to help a little bit!
ReplyDeleteIt's Christmas every day at my house! I'm so happy with that strand... Amelia did a great job on it. The pearls are classy... but who needs classy? :D
DeleteArya is a drunk goldfish going right... but you've inspired me to set up a ground poles course for her. She's going to love that! (Not.)
I also used poles and I have 101 Arena Exercises. The actual exercises were too tricky but I would walk through the patterns and then do some trot sometimes too. At the very least it gave me ideas on things to do other than just circles and riding around the arena.
ReplyDeleteI am very list-focused, so I like to think of the things that my green horse needs to work on, and pick one or two for the day. I specifically try to pick different ones from the day before, because working the same muscle groups/tired muscles groups/drilling isn't that effective for me!
ReplyDeleteSo the mare I'm working with right now is just awful about her right shoulder. She gets locked facing left and doesn't want to unlock her neck to the right. So the last few rides have been about getting access to that shoulder in different ways. First I just did big circles with lots of praise and pets when she'd actually flex to the right and not fall all over herself to the inside. For our second exercise of the day I did some leg yields with her head facing in to the wall (diagonal ones, kinda hard but I like them because they really get you thinking about leg pressure = hind stepping under). Then we went back to circles. The next day I focused on getting her to soften and reach down. This mare has a great walk so I could do a lot of this work at the walk and she didn't get frustrated -- which was amazing! I touched back on what we'd done the previous day, then accessed a new problem: now that we'd unlocked the right shoulder (kinda), she didn't want to switch flexion in her neck. So we played around with that. Next ride I'll probably try to play around with switching flexion on a circle.
I also take a TON of walk breaks and try to make them productive too. Square turns, serpentines, leg yields, etc. Maybe I'm just on the lazy side, but I hate the idea of souring a horse to work because they get sore. And fitness takes ages to build up, in my experience. At least for some of them. After a long walk break I'll go back to doing the main exercise of the day to see if we've still got it and see if I can improve the feeling at all.
I am loving "When Two Spines Align" as a book lately, and while the first half is a little not-applicable when you've got a super greenie, there IS a lot of good stuff in there that I've drawn on for both Murray and the green ottbs I ride. I also love the Jec Ballou Equine Fitness book.
Oh, I also LOVE lunging but not for getting out energy. Just to establish rules and communication. Go when I say go. Woah when I say woah. I really feel like that helps me communicate with them mounted as well, because if they aren't understanding an aid, I can add in some verbal cues to reinforce. I keep the sessions super short -- like 5-10 minutes focusing on transitions and verbal cues.