January 27, 2009

Livvy spent a great night in her new stall! We were there first thing this morning to walk her out to the pasture. No surprises there, the mares were accepting and nice to her. Don and I went back into the stable to clean her stall, and when we next checked, Livvy had wandered all the way out to the far end of the pasture (the side closest to Montana) and was happily checking things out.

Training session #1 was today. I brought Olivia in from the pasture. She walks to me when I call her. We learned left turn (a.k.a. "hide the heinie"), right turn, whoa (which she already knew), then we worked on back up. Yes, this was really fun for me. "Shake the lead underneath her halter and she'll back up" works providing you have some natural ability or desire to be the leader. This goes completely against my grain. I shook the lead, Olivia stared at me. I shook it some more, and I think I heard her giggle. I stopped, and the trainer said "don't stop" so I shook it some more, and Don said he heard Olivia laugh. So, I shook the lead with one hand, and told Livvy to back up while pushing her back with the other hand. Surprisingly this worked! So, having established that ... the next few attempts were met with good results.

It still astounds us how gentle Livvy is, how easy to work with she is, and how she is so willing to do what is asked of her.

We next practiced longeing ... not with Olivia doing any trotting (she is too young), but with swift walking. This was the most unnatural thing that I have attempted to do in a really long time. With Olivia on my right side, things were fine. But with Olivia on my left side, and having to twirl the lead with my left hand to encourage her to walk on .... I had no real ability to control the lead and so Olivia didn't really understand what I was attempting to instruct her to do so she basically walked on so swiftly and in such tight circles around me that I became dizzy enough to have to stop. Okay, so this needs work.

We went through all of the things I learned in sequence, and things went pretty well. Olivia is a quick study, which is going to make this process so much easier for me!

We brushed her afterwards and turned her out by the other girls.

Life is good.

Life with a horse is even better.