I realize I haven’t put a training update on the blog in a long while. I wouldn’t want anyone to think we aren’t progressing!
First, the horses’ free lunging is improving dramatically. I was having problems keeping my in-you-pocket horses away from me and moving in a nice big circle, so I put four barrels and poles and had the horses work around the outside of those. Chance picked this up right away, as usual, and I was able to move all the barrels and poles out a few feet at a time until he now works in a good lunging-sized circle. He will walk and trot both ways, although his counterclockwise needs more work because he tends to cut inside the circle. He picked this up all in his first lesson because the next time I turned him loose in the arena, he started trotting around the circle on his own. He is so smart! Natty is learning also, although a little more slowly. She is getting pretty good at walking the big circle but still wants to cut in on the trot. She’s a work in progress.
The good updates continue concerning Natty’s riding skills. She now steers pretty reliably so that we can do some patterns, circle barrels, weave through poles, etc. She also finally consented to trot in the arena. She will trot once around, and then she’s done! But it’s a start 
Big girl has such a funny attitude, she makes me laugh. The only thing that needs some work is her stopping – she’s great about it until she wants to go somewhere, then she totally ignores me. For instance, she’ll stop every time while working in the arena, but once she got the gate open, and she was leaving no matter what I had to say about it… Still needs some work there (and now I’ve been trained to latch the gate!)
Speaking of the gate, these two have been really pushy at the gate recently when I only want to take out one horse. I had them both turned out in the arena this week, and Chance pushed his way through the gate when I went to take Natty out. He walked over to the hay in the barn, which is stacked on pallets, and climbed up on the pallet so as to better reach the hay. I was sure he’d get a hoof caught in the pallets or something. I rushed Natty into her stall and went after Chance. There is a table set just behind the pallets, so there wasn’t room for him to turn around, so I needed to back him off the pallets. Well, he decided he would just make a tight turn, and this is when the boards in the pallet started breaking under his weight – I for sure thought I’d have trouble then, but Chance was cool as a cucumber and didn’t spook a bit despite having snapping boards under his feet. He turned around and walked calmly back into his stall. Little rascal! He gets into these situations that really scare me, but he never seems to spook and always gets out safely. Sheesh! I need to be more careful, that’s for sure.
My last bit of training news concerns hooves, and we all know how much Natty likes to have her feet worked on. I started trying to rasp Natty’s hooves a little a couple of months ago with the idea of either stretching the amount of time between trims or even getting her to the point where I could maintain her feet myself. She didn’t like the idea so much and starting snorting and backing away from me when she saw the rasp, so we weren’t making much progress. Enter role model Chance… My angel baby couldn’t care less about having his feet worked on, so I started rasping his hooves out in the paddock and rewarding him liberally with magic berry treats for his good behavior. Natty stood back in the horse equivalent of hands-on-hips watching all this, and I could hear the wheels turning in her head, “hmm, the kid doesn’t seem to mind all this, I don’t think he’s being hurt, he’s getting all the treats! I better move in for a closer look…” Pretty soon I felt a gentle nuzzle at the waistband of my pants, and after Chance’s next reward, I picked up Natty’s foot and gave it one gentle rasp and then gave her a treat. I switched back and forth between the horses every other foot, and now they’ve figured it out to the point that I have to separate them to work on feet, but Natty’s tolerating it wonderfully. So proud of her and so thankful for my good little role model!
And finally, if anyone needs and Natty and Chance merchandise, I’ve taken over running the CafePress store for The International Blessed Broodmare Project. It’s still a work-in-progress, too, so these products will be improved as I figure out how to edit and compile and all that jazz, but here’s the store site if you’re interested: (all proceeds go to horse rescue)
http://www.cafepress.com/TIBBP
