Pine Dell Farm<\/a> and has thousands of students since I left her way back when.\u00a0 I decided that Lucky Star would benefit highly in weekly lesson at Pine Dell Farm. Where else can you take a trailer ride, be in an arena with other horses, encounter every scary object possible and learn to communicate with your blessed human partner.<\/p>\nThe temperature started out a warm 40 degree during the day, but had plummeted to the low 30’s by the time the lesson got done.\u00a0 No problem for me!\u00a0 Lucky Star and I played on the ground.\u00a0 I got to move so much that my muscles warmed up my entire body.<\/p>\n
Lucky Star became a “Horse That Wouldn’t Move”.\u00a0 Lucky Star became a boulder.\u00a0 Do you remember driving in a car up a steep Colorado mountain and looking at those boulders. Remember thinking, what if that boulder decided to drop into the highway. The boulder would be bigger than the road and if you were lucky enough not to be squished, your drive to the top of the mountain would be terminated.\u00a0 No one could move a big boulder.<\/p>\n
That’s what Lucky Star was last night.\u00a0 Sadly I had to move up to phase four to get him to move. We had a move battle.\u00a0 I stayed at phase four whenever he gave me the smallest try. That is a sin.\u00a0 Release for the smallest try, even for a boulder.<\/p>\n
Treats work really well for Left brained introvert horses.\u00a0 I explained to Karen that I had been unable to get Lucky Star to accept a treat.\u00a0 He didn’t know what I was trying to put in his mouth and wouldn’t try it.\u00a0 I didn’t have any yummy Winnie’s cookies to try..just pepperment nuggets and a carrot. Failed<\/p>\n
Karen had been through this before.\u00a0 Alfalfa cubes smell like delicious grass. She got some alfalfa cubes.\u00a0 Lucky Star moved without effort on my part and he got a treat. When he took that alfalfa cube into his mouth, his entire life changed.\u00a0 His horse expression couldn’t have been clearer!\u00a0 WOWSA DOWSA!!!\u00a0 Humans have delicious things!\u00a0 Lucky Star tried to crawl into my pocket the rest of the night.\u00a0 He did a lot of backing.\u00a0 He is really good at backing.<\/p>\n
Karen also suggested that we use a plastic bag on the end of the carrot stick.\u00a0 Many times a shaking of the plastic bag to ask a horse to move is more effective than the string slapping the body.<\/p>\n
We got the plastic bag carrot stick.\u00a0 I carefully opened it up.\u00a0 I drug the plastic bag and Lucky Star instantly followed it.\u00a0 We walked around the arena for a while with Lucky trying to get his with his teeth.\u00a0 After that, I swished the bag all over his body and he remained a confident horse.<\/p>\n
The lesson was about ended.\u00a0 Karen took Lucky Star and tried to sidepass on the wall with the stick and bag as directional tools.\u00a0 It worked great.<\/p>\n
Tonight, I got Lucky Star out of the pasture and in the barn light, we did a few circles both ways.\u00a0 He was not a boulder tonight.\u00a0 He was the ocean waves.\u00a0 He moved along nicely with some slow down and speed up moments.\u00a0 We finished up by backing into the barn.\u00a0 I told you he was good at backing!<\/p>\n
Karen has group lessons most every Wedneday.\u00a0 Anyone from Pine Dell<\/a> can come.\u00a0 If you would like to trailer in for lesson, give Karen a call at 816-540-3566.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Karen Moulis was my first instructor.\u00a0 It was she that took me from rigid fear to someone that could ride.\u00a0 Karen is great for beginning riders, aging old beginning adult riders and everyone in between. When I passed Level 1, I discovered lessons with Karen’s daughter Jenny and my life with horses evolved. Karen is still instructing at Pine Dell Farm and has thousands of students since I left her way back when.\u00a0 I decided that Lucky Star would benefit highly in weekly lesson at Pine Dell Farm. Where else…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[89,125],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1713","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-country-franks-lucky-star","category-missouri-fox-trotter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1713","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1713"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1713\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1716,"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1713\/revisions\/1716"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1713"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1713"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1713"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}