Had a Peter Maddison-Greenwell clinic this morning. The two lessons that I watched were advanced work, one was working, and getting changes, and the other was concentrating on obtaining a slightly higher, and more advanced head carriage, her horse has a habit of being a little deep at times.
Sometimes, I can leave a clinic feeling pleased for what the others have achieved, but slightly depressed because I no longer have a horse that I can do the more advanced work on. However, I am pleased to say that my positive frame of mind from last weekend has continued.
Work has meant that it didn't really have the opportunity to do any work with Max since last weekend. The OH was helpfully trying to spoil my positive mental attitude by laying bets that the improvement we got by the end of last weekend's work he would have completely forgotten and therefore I was going to have horse eating pallet syndrome again.
Things did not start well when C and I were bringing the four of them in from the paddock. I don't know why this surprised me but all four were inattentive bringing in and staring strongly across the field towards the muck heap, they were a little on their toes and jumpy. I couldn't work out why this would be until I realised they were uncomfortable with the disappearance of the horse box which had gone that afternoon to be serviced prior to it's plating. Now I don't know whether this says something about my four, they did after all stand and watch the lorry being towed across the field by a land rover due to the mud, so clearly saw it disappear and drive up the road. However, spooking at the empty space they seemed to find appropriate behaviour. I have the only horses that can spook at something, and also nothing.
Temple Grandin explains this phenomonem in her book Animals In Translation, basically if you consider animals, particularly horses, to be autistic, then any change in their environment can cause them to exhibit signs of stress. Some horses cope with this better than others however I seem to have some from the lower end of the functioning spectrum :)
So, Max was absolutely fine with the pallet, very happy to work near it, past it, stand next to it etc, etc. Carried on with the work from last weekend but was actually able to do more 'work' rather than focus on attention. Started on the right rein and this went very well, we had soft, round, attentive and some nice circle work.
Then decided to work on the left rein so asked Max to stand still while I swapped sides and sorted my rope out. I had just said 'stand' and then the OH very helpfully dropped something very loudly out of Max's sight. This resulted in Max performing his 'horse balloon' impression, this basically involves him launching himself in the air with his front feet somewhere above the level of my head. In these situations I try and stay calm, not make a big deal of it and just carry on, I did make myself laugh however by uttering what must of been the most useless command as he launched in to orbit which was 'stay standing'. I think that horse had bolted, almost quite literally.
After that it took two full renditions of 10 green bottles to get him back in to some sort of work mode again, my preference is for alcohol related songs to keep my breathing and to help him relax, my other particular favourite with Max is 'show me the way to go home'.
We finished on a good note however and it was a definite improvement on last weekend.
As the OH was busy trimming in the yard and I still had daylight left I decided to also do some ground work with Jamie. Jamie is an ex race TB who is generally very good but can have his moments, you normally see the twinkle in his eye before he actually does anything really bad, and he does at least have the courtesy to boing when he is well away from you. He usually starts off quite good so I was a little surprised when instead of walking out and away from me he started to bend himself in the middle and cross both front and back legs walking sideways like a crab, as I moved he moved, but sideways.
Now this was probably a fairly advanced movement however it wasn't quite what I was expecting so it left me a little confused, until I realised part of the heavy rope I was using on the cavesson had got caught underneath the bottom of my coat so his head was attached to my body and he was trying to do his best to do what I was asking him for.
Jamie always makes my smile when I work him and he decided to cheer me up even more by showing me his rear and spin manoeuvre. This is a move that he has perfected, he rears vertically and then before he lands does a 90 degree turn, usually to the left. Today's was a particularly high scoring move, I never make a big thing about it now, I just said 'no' in a stern voice and then carried on where we left off. Jamie seemed to find the bending work quite hard. I thought he was a right bend horse until he was even worse on the right rein so have now decided he is just a 'no bend' horse.
We will try again tomorrow and see if he is any different.
C rode Charlie Too and worked Rosey in hand so that was four horses worked and one trimmed today which must be a yard record for us.
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