Today both Paulette and Ivanhoe was driven in the pony clubs! Put the old sleighbell I have in the harness and just enjoyed the starlit sky, snow, jogging pony and the sound of the beautiful bell - I think the children loved it too :)
In the weekend my task was to get Ivanhoe to understand the whip better as an aid instead of a mark of accelerating, as a former trotting pony he reaaaally got too excited after Andreas drove him at his training last week. So after that when I used the whip (nicely of course! but still) - he did wonderful piaffes when I just wanted him to do some shoulder in-work... He has had (all the time) a very difficult time in understanding what it means when you hold him with the reins but still use the whip and so he just got too excited and even afraid of the whip as well as he did not understand what I meant (or did when Andreas drove him). So, now I have been doing the same trainings I have been doing with Verano first, to get him at all to put up with the whip and then trained him of what I want. At Saturday he got it and now he does a nice shoulder in-training with the whip just coming close to his side, to both sides and a wonderful leg yield sideways when you press his sides with the whip, also both sides. Of course I'm doing this with long reins. Don't think though this guy will never get use to the whip 100% as a pony would without trotting background, it is so hard stuck in their minds what the whip has been mostly used for, to add speed, so I'll have a long way still to try to calm him down.
In everything you do, it is so important to understand, recognize and take into account the ponies background to make the teaching stressless for the pony as we all understand, it is the first basic rule to any animal training, a stressed pony will not learn a thing. Less is more and there is two things I really really really have always tried to avoid with horses, with trotters also: not to train the pony too much so that they get too exhausted fysically and secondly, never ask more than the pony can understand at the circumstances of the day psychically, the horse should always stay in a position where they can rely 200% in what you are doing, especially when you introduce new things. Of course, you have to add more work to training in addition to get the pony in better shape or to level up in dressage programs, but you have to know the horse to know when to ask for more. Knowing your horse inside out and feeling what would be suitable today leads you to the goal, eventually. And the trust is everything, never loose it.
No comments:
Post a Comment