Great session with Santiago today!
“Extreme” friendly game. Me jumping around like the Easter Bunny had Santiago looking at me thinking “Ok the Scottish gal’s totally lost it today so I’m just going to ignore her… poor woman” His owner giggling as I rapidly ran out of gas, oh did I mention I have a broken baby toe on my left foot? My antics were not attractive and one can only hope that no-one was watching. Goodness knows what the uninitiated would have thought.
Driving – he is disengaging his hind quarters with just a tap both sides and moving nose, neck, front feet on his left but still working on the right side. His owner was fascinated to learn, that unlike humans, horses do NOT transfer information from one side of their body/brain to the other but have to be trained on the left and the right side.
Circle – Interesting! His Vet recommended he trot for a few minutes each day. Trotting has not really been in his vocabulary. Walk is fine, but put any pressure on and it’s GALLOP! (of course being a racehorse) Today we had a quick and effective conversation about that! The result three circles at the trot, change direction and three more. What a superstar he is!
Yoyo – We have been working on back up and today he backed into the round corral!
We also have been playing with cones, put a foot on it, touch it with your nose, go find it, back up to it etc. Today the cones were out and at the end of the session while Santiago’s owner and I were recapping what had been learned. He was around 8ft from us just hanging out, until he decided we were doing that human yak yak yak way too much. Next thing we knew he picked a cone up with his teeth and tossed it AT US! bringing up his play drive exuberance? I think so!
Curious, engaged, thinking and obeying, the state of mind you should be aiming for with any horse. You so often see other owners and trainers doing everything to ‘dull’ their horses, a dull horse is an unthinking horses and an unthinking horse is an unresponsive horse. Luckily Santiago is far from that!
Bittmore 