Clinic Day at Lalo's

Today we loaded Maddie in the trailer and took her to Lalo's farm in Elkhorn.  This was the first road trip we took--I was relieved when we arrived safely.  The trailer worked well and Maddie was mostly calm.  We could hear her whinny a couple of times back there. The truck was a little overwhelmed and I'm pleased to report that our friend Joe has offered us the use of his considerably more powerful truck for the trip to Madison.  Our little Ford Ranger was really getting bounced around and could barely make 55 mph on flat blacktop.  It was about an hour each way.

There were 5 other horses at the clinic and maybe 10 people watching.  We started with ground work and an obstacle course.  There was a bridge, a tarp, some ground poles, etc.  Maddie aced all this.  I was actually pretty surprised that she walked over the bridge so well.  We played with a plastic curtain that Lalo uses for desensitizing and Maddie was able to pass through it a few times.  There was not enough time to finish her on this obstacle, though.

For ridden work we repeated the obstacles and did some barrel racing at the end.  There was also a tire on the ground and several riders tried to have their horse put a front leg into it.  Maddie was the only horse that could do it!  Not even Lalo could get his horse to put a leg into it.  For the ridden and ground portion, a judge was watching all the horses and scoring each one.  Maddie placed 3rd in ground and 3rd in ridden work.  Everyone was really impressed with her!  I was just pleased that I could work her and feel safe and in control.  She looked to me for leadership today.

We also had the crowd make some noise while Maddie walked past them.  I was happy that Maddie could handle this.

We need to work on picking up and object and moving it.  Today Lalo had a bucket on a barrel and the bucket was a little unnerving to Maddie when I picked it up and we walked off.  I have done this exercise with Maddie, but only a couple of times and never with a bucket.