Friday, September 23, 2011

I worked with Snippy and Julie today. Spent the most time with Snippy because she needed some attention. Snippy continues to be head shy and is especially nervous about having her ears handled. Now I am sure the big name trainers have a fancy name for it but I just mess with them until they learn it isn't going to kill them and they learn to accept it. Spent a lot of time rubbing and scratching Snippy's head and poll. I really think she is starting to like it a bit. While we were getting used to each other, I brushed and curried her and even clipped her bridle path with a pair of scissors.  I also flagged her and sacked her out. She was a nervous ninny at first when I started with the flag but she finally settled down and stood rock solid for me. The same with the saddle blanket when I was sacking her out. She is doing better. She leads better each session and will get the hang of it before too much longer. Snippy just needs time and repetitions and she will be just fine.

I moved over to Julie and after grooming her a bit, I slapped the saddle on her. This time I was a lot more forceful when I put the saddle on her. Before I had been real quiet and had done everything slowly, not this time. If she was going to explode I wanted her to get it out of her system. She handled everything very well. I even saddled her with the lead draped over my arm like I would if she were a broke horse. I lunged her with the saddle on and while she is not the best at lunging she never once offered to fight the saddle.

Wednesday evening as we were coming back from Des Moines, I had a call from the Amish "trainer" who had Sweetie. She was dancing away from him whenever he tried to mount her. He wanted to know if I knew of anything to stop her from doing that. I told him I would think about it and I would be over Friday evening to see what was going on. After watching him work with her this evening, I paid him for his time to date, loaded Sweetie, and brought her home. I will be starting over from scratch with her and then work with her to get her ready to ride. Sometimes it is better to pay the price up front and get a better product than trying to cut corners. It is good to have Sweetie back home.