Taking liberties
Over the last few years I have tended to feel that working at liberty and the whole "bareback and halter" riding thing is a bit pretentious, a bit circus and not a whole lot to do with real, practical horsemanship. My views on that haven't really changed but when you only have a few minutes it can be pretty handy to just chuck a halter on your horse and take them to the school and as there isn't much work on-line that I feel as though Zorro really needs to do, and at liberty you can work with a little more subtlety and your horse can share their opinions about things a bit more clearly it can be useful from that perspective.
Today was a good example- we got to the yard a little ahead of sunset but not enough ahead to be worth riding out or, given that we were a little tight for time, tacking up.
I brushed the worst of the mud off Zorro and we went and played in the arena a bit, working on some simple tasks like leading from just a hand under his jaw, staying with me through transitions ( in a straight line, with a following wind, we can get halt to canter and back to halt ) and generally working on the basics. I had picked up the energy a bit, working on some of our showy trot with a big archy neck and dramatic mane and some quick changes of direction. It was all fine until sleepsy_mouse came down to the school to watch. Her arrival appeared to spook Zorro, or something did and he went pelting off around the arena absolutely flat out, bucking and leaping in the air. And then he kept doing it. At one point he paused and came over to me, snarping loudly to let me know that there was definitely need for all this and then off he went again. I realised at some point that I had my camera and not having time to sort it out took a couple of photos on automatic. Happily one of them came out like this:
As he was starting to calm down a little I used some of the same liberty stuff we had been doing before to get him back with me and once he had caught his breath we were back to normal.
I'm going to blame that little outburst on spring grass, I think.
Today was a good example- we got to the yard a little ahead of sunset but not enough ahead to be worth riding out or, given that we were a little tight for time, tacking up.
I brushed the worst of the mud off Zorro and we went and played in the arena a bit, working on some simple tasks like leading from just a hand under his jaw, staying with me through transitions ( in a straight line, with a following wind, we can get halt to canter and back to halt ) and generally working on the basics. I had picked up the energy a bit, working on some of our showy trot with a big archy neck and dramatic mane and some quick changes of direction. It was all fine until sleepsy_mouse came down to the school to watch. Her arrival appeared to spook Zorro, or something did and he went pelting off around the arena absolutely flat out, bucking and leaping in the air. And then he kept doing it. At one point he paused and came over to me, snarping loudly to let me know that there was definitely need for all this and then off he went again. I realised at some point that I had my camera and not having time to sort it out took a couple of photos on automatic. Happily one of them came out like this:
As he was starting to calm down a little I used some of the same liberty stuff we had been doing before to get him back with me and once he had caught his breath we were back to normal.
I'm going to blame that little outburst on spring grass, I think.