Posts by Susan

We had an Advancing Clinic at Pine Dell today. Part of our ground work -assigned only to Sue and I- was driving using the 45' rope. It's a stiff rope, like a lariat. It's very long. Sue didn't like it moving behind her rear end very much. I stayed right beside her and asked her to move on the rail. It didn't work at all in the arena. She got nervous about the rope on her rear end and got her feet outside of the "reins". I wasn't handy enough…

We rode outside in the huge arena up in the 40 acre hay field, obstacle course, horse riding pasture etc. Now that I'm not afraid anymore, riding Sue was fun. I had Sue run around a little bit in the obstacle course. She did beautifully. There were quite a few horses in the arena...well there were seven of us. Part of the arena had standing water so that became one of the ground games we played before we got on. Heck, I sent Sue right into the mud and water.…

We had the Whole Enchillada Memorial Day Weekend in Bentonville. We had the Friday evening free demonstration where the entire Vaught family (except 3 year old Justin) rode their horses and knocked the socks off the crowd. Five year old Caitlyn rode Velvet. At the end, Caitly asked Velvet to lie down and she wowed the crowd. Saturday, we had the Difficult and Challenging Horse Demonstration. That was very cool. Tony had to take a long time with Scout to get him relaxed and unafraid so that he could ride…

The morning was spent online doing the change direction at a trot without breaking gait. Sue did fairly well at this considering she had not done it before and is nervous at turning and facing me and then going the other direction! Anyway, we had a lot of fun at this and made some improvements in maintaining gait. Sue felt claustrophobic when everyone started riding. I was instructed to do the hindquarter/forequarters turning task and then move on. Everyone else was doing it at a stand still. But Sue felt…