Monday, September 15, 2008

Happy Feet

Today was trimming day for the ponies. And we got to experiment with Power Tools today! Patrick (the farrier) got a new grinder that attaches to the top of a regular, battery-poweed drill, and was using that to round and bevel their walls and put the final, finishing touches on their feet. Pretty pony pedicures! Is it wrong that my pony has prettier feet than I do right now? (A summer of wearing flip-flops takes its toll.)

Prior to Patrick arriving, I spent about 15 minutes doing some ground work with Beamer. That horse has the laziest walk, both in hand and under saddle, and I aim to improve it. The best place to start (or easiest for me, since it doesn't involve lugging saddles back and forth) is from the ground up...quite literally. We worked on immediate response time, actually maintaining a nice, forward stride, and not slowing to a crawl after ten strides.

We also worked on pivoting and actually using that lovely, strong rear end. For as well-conformed of a horse as Beamer is, he sure is lazy about putting that conformation to work. *sigh* Put Mimi's mental abilities together with his physical attributes, and you'd have the textbook endurance horse.

I hope to actually hop on him mid-week in the arena and give him a tune-up. He does know how to do a lot of this stuff (he'd better...I taught him much of this when we first got him!) but he's gotten lax and lazy about it...and allowed to get away with it.

Training Project #2: Train Dad to reenforce Beamer's training and not let him get away with crawling along, head inverted and back hollowed, doing his best pogo-stick impression. But it helps to get on the horse first and know exactly what it is he's doing and know what I have to do to counter it before trying to explain it to Dad.

Is it really still only Monday? I feel like I've put a whole week in already!

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