Sue- How Do You Do at Trail Ride Clinic?

Finally the long awaited trail ride clinic was here. It was postponed for bad weather nearly a month ago and the wait was fretting. Is Sue ready to ride with other horses out in the open? We spent the morning engaged in getting horses used to scary things outside. Most horses in the clinic weren't scared of anything. Sue and I got to circle with two and then three other horses. When we circled with the three horses, she became noticiably more relaxed. However, when we were circling with two…

Sue- How Do You Do with New Horse Friends?

Sue and I attended a Problem Horse clinic. It was a nice day and we were outside. We had about 9 horses in the clinic and while there was enough space...it really wasn't enough space for SUE, until.. Jenny selected three horses that had varying degrees of unconfidence. We were told to have our horses be as close as possible and play the games. We circled the horses with the humans standing back to back. We didn't pass the rope, we just kept our own horse. At first we trotted…

Sue – How Do You Do -Another Crowded Arena?

Sue - How Do You Spell Crowded! We had a What Do You Want to Do clinic yesterday. A bunch of horses and riders showed up. We had 10 horses in the arena. It's a smaller arena than Pine Dell and 10 horses was just about the amount that the arena could comfortably hold. Of course it was a little too cramped for Sue, the horse that is scared of many other horses. A couple of times, we started to bolt forward when Sue got scared. Several times I caught…

Sue – How Do You Scoot?

Sue - How Do You Scoot Foward So Fast? I rode Sue today and we did really well. I try to keep one hand on the horn at all times to prevent me from jerking back on the reins if she bolts forward. She's doing so good now that she runs out of gas and tries to stop. That's when she gets pretty relaxed. There's a "short" horse inside her. Today, she tried to stop as we were doing a clover leaf pattern. I picked up the hand that is…

Sue – How Do Your Eyes Sparkle!

I've been letting Sue be a horse in the pasture for 2-3 months since it has been so cold, icy and snowy here. One day when I walked out to the pasture, I noticed that Sue was more outgoing. Her eyes were darker and more intent. Much to my amazement, she had moved up one horse in the pecking order. wow Sue got to attend a clipping and braiding clinic a couple of weeks ago. When I took her to the clinic, I noticed that she hadn't regressed. In the…

Sue – How Do You Interupt that Negative Fear Behavior?

I've not been able to get Sue to circle online without her going into the fear zone. Even the "S" turn manuever gets her riled up and rigid. She gets deep into fear before we hit the "S" of the turn and doesn't recover too much when we managed our direction change. She's sort of like a freight train to try to get turned and going the other way. I've been doing half circles on the wall and that has worked reasonably well to interupt that fear. BUT Tonight..we played…