Thursday 3rd July

Day 2 with Jackie Chant.

Today we started with any questions from yesterday anybody had, then moved on to what we would be working on today.

The morning we done some theory, then done some simulations. The first simulation was on energy, we had to get into pairs and hold hands and bring our energy levels up and down - very interesting I could really feel when my partner lifted her enrgy in her body and then lowered it again. We also done some pinky dancing in pairs, again very interesting as again I could feel my partners energy come up and down and made me want to stay in time with her – how cool. We then done some rope work on the fence line practicing bringing our enrgy up as a phase 1 then quickly going to phase 4 using a quick flick of the wrist to send energy down the line – Really good technique to learn and think it will work wonders when playing with Blossom.

We then headed out to the playfield with our horses and warmed them up using what we learnt from yesterday. Blossom’s circles were much better than they were before using the technique to keep her attention Jackie had showed me. But I found she still seems to loose her confidence out of a bigger circle so I kept the circles smaller to help gain her confidence and keep her attention on me.
Sideways was much better today and took less time for her to find relaxation, which was good to see. Yo Yo still needs some work to keep her straight and I still need to use lots of approach and retreat to help her gain confidence backing to the the end of the 22ft rope.

Jackie then gave us a demo with a students horse – she had set up a obstacle of two barrels next to the fence line and started with asking the horse to squeeze between the her and the fence and disengage at the barrels. Once that was going well she then stated asking the horse to do a figure of eight pattern round the barrels, because the horse she was using for this demo was a left brain extrovert she had to change the game a lot to keep his attention. So she mixed it up by asking him to squeeze at walk and trot, figure of eight and also added in stopping on the straight next to the fence an backing up. Really interesting demo to watch!

We then got the chance to play with this, I started with asking Blossom just to squeeze between me and the fence and turn and face at the barrels. She seemed quite unconfident and was trying to rush all the time, so I used the stop and back up to help her gain confidence and stop her rushing – Then she started doing the squeeze really well so we moved on to playing with the figure of eight pattern. This is where our problems started – When I asked Blossom to go round the barrel and the draw back to me she wouldn’t come in and just stood braced or went backwards. I wasn’t sure if this behaviour was RB or LB as to me it looked like unconfidence or it could have been dominance… I played around with it for a bit making sure I played lots of friendly but still didn’t seem to be getting anywhere.

Jackie called us all over to give us a demo on squeeze game over a log with another students horse – Interesting demo as the horse wasn’t too sure about jumping at the start but within minutes Jackie had her looking like a totally different horse.
We then got the chance to go and play with that – but I was quite happy with Blossom squeeze game over jumps she just needs to gain more confidence to start jumping bigger jumps. So I asked Jackie if she could come and help me with the last task (barrel patterns) as I was really confused and didn’t want to just ignore the problems I was having. Jackie watched me playing with her and soon got to see the problems I was having – so she had a play with her and found she was having the exact same problems and if anything Blossom became worse because Jackie started asking more from her. Jackie decided to give us all a demo with Blossom using the large poles in the field - basically she would let Blossom run and would use the poles to stop her, teaching Blossom to yield from the pressure on the halter. She wasn’t a happy pony with this at the start and actually reared up a few times to try and get away from the pressure on the halter. But by the end of the demo she was going much more relaxed and soon as the slightest feel was on the halter she would yield to it. Extremely interesting demo for all of us I think.

After lunch we done some quick simulations on fluidity – we got into pairs and one person put there hand on top of the others pretending they were on a horse and had to try and stay on without moving there body only there hand, then had to push down on the other persons hand to try and stay on and the last one was to show how fluid you can be if you move your whole body with your hand. Wow what a difference it made moving your whole body it really helped me stay in time with the movement my partner was making and when it was time to change round so I was the horse I could really feel the difference when they were more fluid with me rather than fighting against my movement.

We then headed out to the play field and prepared our horses for ridden work. Jackie then gave us a ridden demo using one of the other students horses – Showing us lateral flexion, direct and indirect reins and also using our energy for transitions and one rien back up – Really good demo as it showed us to hold in there and wait until the horse did soften before releasing and gave us some ideas to go away to play with.

I decided just to ride Blossom in one of the round pens as that way I can control her impulsion easier and gives me the chance to work on the things Jackie showed us in her demo. Blossom was very good today considering she hasn’t been ridden for a while and started to relax by the end of the session, I was very pleased with her.