Today was VERY windy and I was so impressed with how Maddie handled it. I was all alone and tacking up was the calmest it's been since the Pink Barn. She sat still and seemed relaxed. Before mounting, I worked on her lateral flexion, which has just been getting duller and duller. This is strange to me, since the last two horses I worked with got so light so quickly. With Maddie I am focusing on picking up contact more gradually and trying not to surprise her. I made progress today, but it's going to take some time to get the lightness back that we had at the Pink Barn.
Maddie walked out pretty well, just sticking a little bit in the driveway. Once we were in the woods, she did not have trouble moving forward. I found a place where we could work on "tree bending," where I ask her to bend around a tree, come to halt, back up, and repeat on the other side. She softened well and we were able to move up to the trot. We repeated this exercise off and on for the rest of the ride. She was changing sides fairly well and a couple of times she was showing the beginnings of sitting on her haunches and coming across in front.
After a bit of work in the woods, we walked out into the fields and went to visit some new farms. She alternated between relaxation, electric spook, and dead-duck spook. Let me explain.
"Dead-duck spook" is the most frustrating. Maddie will see something (today that included an excavator, a yard full of trailers and equipment, a flapping vinyl fence, and several undetermined stimuli) and come to a DEAD stop. Dead, nothing. No movement, not particularly upset, just unwilling to pick up a leg and take a step forward, despite me giving her everything I have (legs, end of the reins, crop, flogger). Her lateral flexion and yielding of hindquarters is also very poor in this configuration. Today I took some advice from John Lyons and tried to keep her moving in other directions, then offering her the direction I want. This helped a lot, but at one point she found all points of the compass equally spooky and she just sat still. I could not even turn her around to go home. Surprisingly, it was in an open area along a fenceline with friendly, calm horses in the pasture and no buildings nearby, on a hilltop with a good view in all directions. To get out of there I had to back her up. Once we were 100 feet away, moving towards home, she reverted to "electric spook."
"Electric spook" is when Maddie is dancing in her gait with a high head and zero softness in any part of her body, ready to canter or bolt with the slightest encouragement from me or the environment. In this situation I can either pet her on her neck, go into a smooth posting trot, or yield her hindquarters and try bringing her attention back to me. Tree bending is especially helpful for electric spook. She at least has movement and some working controls, so I find electric spook much more preferable than dead duck spook.
We worked a bit in the Schumann's outdoor arena, making fairly round 15m circles at the trot, and doing a lot of canter departs. She cross fired again at one point. We also went into the woods and did a few more jumps. She has not shown any problems with going over simple log jumps. Good impulsion, no sign of refusal, and no over jump. I'm really pleased with that.
Finished a great ride (close to 2 hrs, I'd say) and I threw her back with the herd. No one looked up when she entered the mud lot. Maddie rolled and munched on some hay.
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