You Want Me To Do What? No Way!

For the past week we’ve been working to convince Whisper he can jump. The barrels were pretty much a bust although he did do a sort of hop, reach, kick thing with them a few times. What he actually learned was that if he pushed one it would open a space big enough to walk thru – which he did quite calmly. Nope, can’t say Whisper isn’t a smart puppy (er…horsey). In an attempt to find out if we were just starting too high for him I took him down to our somewhat improvised trail course and lunged him back and forth over some logs with varying heights. No problem. No jumping but he moved smoothly over the obstacles…until…he caught a branch in his tail. Now this branch was about 3 feet long and maybe an inch and a half thick – not insignificant. He jumped and the branch jumped after him. He loped a few steps and the branch flipped around and poked him in the belly. He loped a few more steps and stopped. Offending branch (aka dragon) was convinced to join the wood pile. We did a few more rounds and called it a day. The high point here is that although the branch spooked him he didn’t overreact and allowed me to help him overcome his adversary.

Time for the cavalettis. We set up one in the arena and after some basic lungeing I sent him over the jump which was set about 12 inches. He trotted over rather nicely but didn’t jump. After doing this for awhile he started moving faster and broke into a canter. I let him hoping he would jump and he did a couple of times but he also was getting himself spun up. He started leaning on the lunge line and refusing to change direction. Again I let him keep cantering because that’s what I would do with Spice. She will run for a bit then seeing that her histrionics were getting no result she slows down and pays attention. If all else fails I can use the lead to pull her off balance.

Note to self. Whisper weighs at least 400 lbs more than Spice. I cannot pull him off balance. He pulled the lunge line out of my hand and lunged himself right out of the arena. He didn’t go far and let me walk up to him (the treat probably helped a bit). We returned to the arena and did some more controlled lungeing until he settled down. At this point my mother took over.( She will be working with Whisper and Samantha while I travel to Virginia to help move my husband here). They worked mostly on getting used to each other and coordinating handler, horse, lunge line, and lunge whip. She’s probably more stern with him, definitely more vocal, and won’t let him bluff her. It will be really good for him. He's learning to respond to and trust someone other than me.