Tilt-A-Wheel

Have you ever seen a Tilt-A-Wheel at a carnival.  You know how the platform turns and the thing that is attached to the platform turns and spins.

That’s sort of like what Lucky Star’s brain is like.  He has a very active brain that is always working, whirling, tilting and zipping around the track.  His brain is looking for fun and play.

In the arena, I’m trying to keep him on the rail and work on exciting things like straightness, gait, haunches in.  Lucky Star is not thinking those are really exciting and fun things.  He’s looking around the arena and sees interesting things.  Right around every forth step, Lucky veers off the rail.  He’s headed for excitement.  Occasionally, we argue about stepping back to the rail.  It’s sort of disruptive to our training on maintaing the gait.

Every now and then I have him turn circles. That makes him happy for a while, because he’s fooled into thinking we are headed in all directions of the arena.  When he figures out that  circling is not fun, our precise reining aka dressage circles collapse and then we do a pattern like an arrow.

On the trail, I’ve noticed that there’s not this desire to surge into the brush. We go nicely straight on the trail. But when we meet other horses, we don’t move.  We let those other horses come right up to us. We are thinking that we get to play with those other horses. Only when the other horses go on past do we move.  That’s why we didn’t move when those wedge of horses were coming right at us.  Lucky Star was intending on having a play day with them.

Active brain, always on the move.  It’s the sign of a left brain extrovert horse!

Lucky Star is spending the week at For the Horse Ranch with the entire family taking turns riding him.  It was Tuesday when we figured out he has an Ever-Ready bunny brain.  I just thought he didn’t know to follow my focus.  I was wrong.