When I got Cisco, he had been trail ridden for three years solo on the trail. \u00a0His spook was a stop and brace his front legs. \u00a0His entire ridden life had been as a trail horse. \u00a0Cisco comes to me. \u00a0I turn him into an arena horse. \u00a0This might be the start of our third year and he has been on two trail rides as my horse in those three years. \u00a0He now is a rail or fence bound arena horse.<\/p>\n
I decided that Cisco needs to revisit the trail. \u00a0It is nice for an arena horse to get out into the real world. \u00a0Give the horse a scenic break! \u00a0 \u00a0I love to ride in an arena and develop a horse. \u00a0I do like riding out in a park that has flat trails as that helps develop the gait. \u00a0Plus, I love to ride fast (when I’m not afraid). \u00a0Flat trails with no nasty steep hills to slow me down makes me a happy trail rider!<\/p>\n
Today is the day. \u00a0There is a flurry of fear in my brain. \u00a0Memories of the good ole days prior to fear come to mind. \u00a0I rode Velvet, Sage and JR on many solo rides at the park. \u00a0Then I had a horse that broke my confidence, name not to be mentioned. \u00a0I fought my way back, except for this one remaining piece of riding. \u00a0My and my brain have little chats today on the way to the park.<\/p>\n
I unloaded a very worried Cisco. \u00a0There are horse trailers here, but no horses. \u00a0They are all out on the trail. \u00a0Since horses are a prey animal and a herd animal, they like to have horse company. \u00a0Cisco is all alone in the world. \u00a0He even forgot somewhat that I existed. \u00a0I am his anchor and his safety, but he forgot that early on. \u00a0He is not out of control. \u00a0He is wonderfully in my control, but 90% of his brain is focused on the landscape. \u00a0He is looking for lions, tigers and things that will kill him. \u00a0Ten percent of his brain knows I exist along with the rope attached to my hand.<\/p>\n
We go on a long trek. \u00a0His job is to keep moving and do what I ask. \u00a0His job is to side pass, back, do half and full circles. \u00a0We even walk through a mucky place. \u00a0While I’m trying to keep my boots from being sucked into the muck, he gets a little to close and gets me a little off-balance. \u00a0Thankfully, I survive. \u00a0I walk nearly a mile and Cisco runs nearly three miles, in circles around me. \u00a0Finally, as we are getting close to the parking lot, two horses appear on the trail. \u00a0Cisco and I wait for them and he instantly relaxes when they get close. \u00a0We follow them back to the trail head and he is a happy relaxed horse that probably has 80% of his brain on me.<\/p>\n
Now there are horses in the parking area. \u00a0Cisco is calm. \u00a0I get his bridle on and mount up. \u00a0Hmmm, he’s not as relaxed as I thought. \u00a0We went over near two horses and riders. \u00a0They were practicing side passing. \u00a0Cisco and I went into our “square exercise”. \u00a0This allows an excited horse to move plus it forces the horse to go left-brained to think. \u00a0We go forward, side pass, back, forward and side pass, making a square. \u00a0There is no relaxing in this excited Cisco. \u00a0His head is up and I have maybe 30% of his brain.<\/p>\n
After a while we do hindquarter and forequarter turn. \u00a0We make it over to the gravel road parking and chat with one of the riders. \u00a0In not too long, I decide that we can now ride up and down the gravel parking road. \u00a0I might have 40% of his brain now. \u00a0We ride up and down the road, chat with some other riders and I decide I have a majority of his brain and enough control to be safe. \u00a0We head out to the trail which is in a large wide open field. \u00a0Well, some of his brain deserted me and he takes a while before responding to any rein request that I give his head.<\/p>\n
Here are solutions to getting control back when the horse forgets that a human is on his back. \u00a0We walked up and down in the field doing serpentine. \u00a0Serpentine allows him to respond to my rein request and gives his brain back to me. \u00a0We do “S” turns up and down the field. \u00a0We also start the million transitions. \u00a0We take ten steps forward, stop and back. \u00a0We repeat this a million times and his brain returns. \u00a0He is a bit grumpy about the backing part, which forces his brain back to me. \u00a0We do a few circles, but circles didn’t really get his brain to think about me. \u00a0The success of the serpentine and the million transitions allowed me to return to the safety of the parking lot with the other horses.<\/p>\n
We spend time chatting with the horse people again and gaiting up and down the gravel parking lot road. \u00a0Probably about fifteen minutes went by and I decided Cisco was with me about 60% and we went off on the trail again. \u00a0We went about 2 miles and returned. \u00a0Oh my, he is a “go horse!” \u00a0He goes. \u00a0He wants to see what is ahead of him. \u00a0He constantly looks at the large fields beside us to see if there is anything to be worried about.<\/p>\n
There are a lot of bike riders out today. \u00a0He isn’t a bit concerned about bikes, cars or trucks. \u00a0We did have one smooth sidestep startle and a lot of forward energy.<\/p>\n
I have committed to doing this seven days. \u00a0It will get better every time I go out. \u00a0I might end up with nearly 90-100% of his brain by the time we do this seven times!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When I got Cisco, he had been trail ridden for three years solo on the trail. \u00a0His spook was a stop and brace his front legs. \u00a0His entire ridden life had been as a trail horse. \u00a0Cisco comes to me. \u00a0I turn him into an arena horse. \u00a0This might be the start of our third year and he has been on two trail rides as my horse in those three years. \u00a0He now is a rail or fence bound arena horse. I decided that Cisco needs to revisit the trail.…<\/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":[106,125],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3543","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cisco","category-missouri-fox-trotter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3543","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=3543"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3543\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3551,"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3543\/revisions\/3551"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}