Guesssss what! I am now officially being paid to train a couple horses for the lady who owns the mare that I am working with in my class in school. That sentence was confusing. She sent our mare to the school's program, but also has four more horses at home. She apparently likes how my partner and I work with Mare, because she asked if we would like to work with her other four. And of course we said yesyesyes!
So I am on two horses, and partner is on the other two. I have a Gelding who has about 20 rides on him, from another girl in our class [who is too busy with other things to continue training blahblahblah] but had pretty much no ground work put on him. Other horse is a big drafty mare who has nothing at all on her. So she is my starting-from-scratch horse.
Went and worked with them for the first time today. Ground work for the both of them. Sacking out with ropes, leading, backing, moving hindquarters away from pressure.... Some lunging. Took Gelding and put in him surcingle, and hooked lines to him. Ground drove him a bit at walk and a little bit of trot- he did fabulous. Was giving to the bit and turning nicely. Put surcingle on Drafty too, just let her wear it around...Free lunged her a bit. She is so out of shape! Ha! Next time, I think I will lunge her on a line instead...She was a tad distracted and disrespectful at times. Also, Drafty has bad bad habit of leaning to the point of falling down when you pick up her feet. Like...She purposely pushes herself back so that she falls over, while leaning all her [massive] weight on you. Problem! Anybody have some tips for helping that? Anyways, excited to be working with them!
In other news, played a little with Gypsy today. Took out the dreaded clippers, which I have never tried on her. To my utter amazement, she couldn't care less about them. I clipped her little nose whiskers off, and it made me happy inside.
No Whiskers! Success!
Also tried to do a bit of a bridlepath, but the clippers were very dull. Sad day.
Oh, and I almost forgot. In horse training class today, I decided to try and canter our Mare under saddle out of the round pen for the first time. Just about almost came off...Scared me silly! But our instructor helped me get a few good strides of canter in, and then let her be. Hopefully next time will go a little better!
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