Last week's happenings...

So while little Tucker is currently curled up with my stuffed horse, Apollo, and sleeping, I thought I would go ahead and finish off part two of Sunday's blog by telling you what happened last week. Think of it as a sequel to Sunday's blog. Hey movies have sequels, why can't blogs? LOL

Last Monday, Marsha and I took Raider and Balou over to Trey Young's facility. Trey is a local trainer who excels in the natural horsemanship methods and has worked with several renowned trainers such as Chris Cox. He's a really good teacher and really great with the horses. I learned a lot in just the few hours we were there.

Mostly what we were there for was to expose the mustangs to cattle. Marsha had done this with Splash a couple times before taking her to the Supreme Makeover (sometimes during the trail course, one of the obstacles will be riding around or even moving a cow or two), so this time was no different. We each took turns playing around with moving and cutting the small herd Trey had in the arena, during which Trey would occasionally talk us through what to do and give us hints on how to make certain maneuvers go smoother. Balou had fun, but he wasn't too interested in the cattle. Raider on the otherhand, was a different story.

Since we let them see the cows, Raider kept an eye on them. Not in a spooky/skittish way, but instead watched them with alert ears. I noticed this and quickly realized that he was watching how they were moving. Very rarely during the time we were there was he not watching them in some way or another. When it came time for me to introduce him to moving the herd, Trey told me to simply let Raider follow the herd before slowly starting to push them. He followed them with perked ears for a couple moments, but as soon as we started pushing them in different directions, he started surprising everybody. He started pinning his ears back and actually lunging at the cows like a real cow-horse! Pretty soon, I had to try and keep him from lunging forward and biting the cows so he would keep listening to me. At one point, we were pushing a single cow from the herd down to the other side of the arena before letting it go and he actually took off from a rollback and started chasing it down the arena! Even some of the other guys that worked at Trey's kept saying he had a natural cow-sense, which is surprising since it's mostly bred into horses from performance lines (such as Sunfrost lines, which is what Snazzy is out of-he's got some cow-sense too). Needless to say, Raider had a blast showing me he could be a little cow pony (hint for anybody who's looking for a future cow pony).

After playing with the cows, Marsha and I took the mustangs to a smalltrail set-up where Trey had a cowboy curtain (basically a tarp tied between two trees and cut into strips), a tunnel, and a see-saw bridge that we walked and rode them over. It took a little bit for Raider to walk through the curtain but eventually he started walking through it like a pro (albeit, still wary about it). Over all, it was a very good, productive day and we both had a lot of fun. I asked Trey if at some point I could bring Snazzy over and ride and he said he would be more than happy to have us over. So once I get Snazzy up and going again good, we'll be going over to his place and make a day of it.

The rest of the week went smoothly too. We worked on my 90-second Compulsory pattern, which all I have to show is walk, trot, canter, backing up, 90-degree hind-quarter turn, and we're planning on a lead change of some sort during the pattern. Right now, we're having some troubles with his leads, but we're getting them fixed pretty quickly. I'm still happy that Raider got his right lead and he going into it consistantly! LOL

We also picked out my freestyle song and we're going to start playing around with what do in it this week. So we've started riding too it and Marsha by the end of this week, we should have a good idea of what we can do in the song. It's a really good song and I'm very excited with what we're talking about doing in the freestyle. We've also started teaching Raider how to lay down and he's getting the idea pretty good, but he tends to get sticky in his hind end (doesn't know where to put it lol), so it's been a little hard for him.

Well, I guess that's all for now. I'll write another blog either Saturday night or Sunday. Saturday is the BBHA Pink show and we're going to take the mustangs there for the western classes.

Goodnight,
Jess