Level 4 task is for the horse to load himself into a trailer at a trot or canter (at liberty). I have my 3 horse trailer at home for a while. Cisco and I went to load. With my 14′ rope… This trailer is different and makes him nervous. So we had words for me to send him into the trailer…about 10 sentences. Then he panics, turns and runs out. About 5 times of this, he finds the bucket of grain and takes a mouthful before panicking and running out. Five more times of this, he turns around in the trailer and peacefully stands. I motion him out. This takes about 5 more times until he stays in the trailer and eats the grain.
Now I lead him into trailer, eat a biteful of grain and back out. We did this 3 times and we quit the trailer loading task for the day.
Trailer loading at Liberty development has started!
This afternoon, I started my carrot stick riding. We played some ground games at Liberty including side passing to me and from me. We also backed up with me standing behind him. Yep, he is outstanding.
I was ready to start my carrot stick riding. I got on, with him coming along side me automatically. I didn’t even ask him to do that. We did our flexing from side to side and putting his head down at a suggestion from the reins. We walked off and I dropped the carrot stick. So that ended my first day of carrot stick riding! I discovered tree branches are in my way in the round pen. Riding a 15.1 hand horse makes you aware of tree branches! One of them scratched me too! It will die soon. Die, wretched branch!
Cisco and I rode in the round pen. When that got boring, we went out into the pasture. I had not noticed that it was so dead out there. The lack of rain since Early Sept (of course, during the horse show) is killing the green stuff. I did ride holding the reins when we rode thru the pasture, but I bet the next time will be with neck rope and carrot stick. Yee Haw!
I haven’t rode a horse in my own pasture for quite a while. My goodness, we had fun!
What a great time we had! City dog went with us. He really is a country dog now.