Liberty Photos and videos

Reasons I love Liberty work for hot summer days.

• You can wear shorts and sneakers
• Your horse is also working without tack
• They can be freshly hosed
• It is great exercise for you and your horse
• If you are like me you don't have a chance of over heating your horse because running around with him makes you overheat before he even starts to sweat.

At last I have some photos of Bodhi and I working at liberty over fences in the pasture together. Yesterday was actually not as fantastic as the other day(but still so fun!). Bodhi was responding well of course but I felt like I was not cuing him as clearly and I think he had better form over the fences the other day as well. I should be changing the jumps around every session but I was lazy. Also don't worry when you see some of the early photos. I hosed him off before our session so that is not sweat! So enough talk...

Golden Moments...

Backing up during our warm up.

Start off with some cross rails

With a hop over the small vertical

Moving on to a larger vertical

Over one of our natural jumps.

Praise for a job well done.

How about some video!

Give me Liberty or give me carrots

Pony rides...
I invited two of my friends over for pony rides on Monday. Both were novice riders, and one had never ridden a horse before. Bodhi is very tolerant of bouncing and unbalanced riders and sticks to his slow walk and shuffle trot with the occasional un-cued Spanish walk to illustrate just how *bored* he is.
Bodhi does fine for the "pony ride" style of riding. He follows me around nicely and trots when I trot and halts when I halt. If my guests want any control over their mount though they really have to work for it. Bodhi turns into a little stubborn grump if I try to do the instructor styled ride with the guest on the rail and me sitting in the middle. He swerves and they manage to correct and he just turns again. He refuses to move his feet. He looks drunk and my poor friends look flustered. They both eventually got it and they are now both better riders for it but it is frustrating having my lovely soft willing pony turn into a two year old throwing a tantrum. If I leave the ring entirely that helps but I am worried about Canada and how he will act in lessons up there. He is obviously not dangerous and just throwing a pony-tude but I have a hard time figuring out how to fix it since I am not in the saddle. Any of you folks out there have a lesson program and deal with the middle of the ring sour pony? Any advise?

Bodhi's Liberation
Yesterday, since Monday was not a fun day, I decided to keep it fun but challenging. I look him into the bigger pasture with all the jumps set up with the plan to just see what Bodhi was made of. First I played all of the old games from my Parelli days. We did the circle game, yo yo game, and the squeeze game through standards, with a tree and a fence line. I then did figure eights over a jump and a log as I have seen on several blogs lately including Stale Cheerios. It was so neat to see how well he responds at liberty to questions he has either never had or has not done in a long time. It was good for us to take our established cues and apply them to different exercises. He was light and energetic. I could control both his direction and his speed during the games at a walk, then trot, then canter.

We moved on to the rest of the pasture where I set up several jump lines of various distances. I asked him to jump them at the trot and then the canter. . It was fun to see the different ways I could ask: running beside him, calling him over from the landing side and sending him over at the take off side. At one point he went in crooked and missed the second jump in the line. Without prompt and with a look of determination on his face he cantered a wide circle around me and set himself up correctly for the line and executed it perfectly. He then dropped to a trot, turned and stopped at my feet.
"Now I deserve a carrot piece"
I think my mouth was hanging open a bit.

He was loving the fences! He seemed to be beaming with confidence and pride over each jump, much better than the clumsy and unsure baby I was not sure even had a talent for jumping. His knees are tucked up and his back is rounding and he looks great. He jumped every single jump in the pasture even the natural jumps we have set up for crosscountry practice like the logs and tire. It was so fun to see my draft pony so liberated.

In between these bouts of gallopy goodness I worked on calm and connected walking at liberty to keep both of us cool in the heat. He would immediately fall in line next to my shoulder and stretch his neck down when I dipped my shoulder. He would cross in front and give laterally at the walk when I swung my hips towards him and crossed my legs walking diagonally. It was nice to have these calm connected moments in between our revved up play. I feel like I need to work more on the little subtle parts of liberty work. We both prefer the exciting stuff but I really need to slow down and make sure he understands all of my cues and body language and does not just leap to conclusions. At the very end I called him up to a stump and rode him back to the gate bridless asking for halts all the way up.

Each day seems to get better leading me to think what will be our next challenge? With all these glowing reports we know it is coming!

Haircuts and scatter brains

I have not been writing lately because I am feeling a little scattered. I am having a hard time finishing a thought let alone a sentence. So I will just keep it simple today and give an update on Bodhi.

Bodhi has been doing awesome. We had a lesson on Saturday and my instructor was impressed in how much Bodhi had improved since she last saw him ( about a month and a half). She said he was really starting to develop suspension at the trot-very floaty. We also showed her how we can jump now and she was just as surprised and impressed as I was. I can not really explain how excited I am to have a jumping Haflinger. I love my pony and but I had already accepted that we would be flightless. Now the idea of going fox hunting and going to hunter paces is back and I am excited about the possibulities.

She gave a me my list of things to work on filled with the usual suspects of working on changing of bends, keep my elbows back and bent and stop throwing him away at the canter depart. She also gave me a few exercises to work on the flying lead changes. Before the lesson I felt a little wild when I asked for the change like I was looking for the combination of aides that would illicit it but there was really no rhyme or reason to my actions. She wants me to focus on just changing the bend and that should be enough. I think this weekend I am going to work on some more canter transition work, and possibly challenge Bodhi with some jump variety and maybe even raise the height a little. He can do it I am sure but I am a big baby!
Bodhi also got a hair cut. The B.M. gave him a trace clip as he was getting so sweaty during rides. She did a great job! I am debating right now whether to pull or roach Bodhi's mane. It is a mess and he keeps ripping it out! Poor itchy man. I feel so bad for him as he itches and scratches away big patches of hair and skin with his bug allergies but have found no real solution for the problem. If it would just stay cold then he would have some relief but alas we live in Florida!

Roller Coaster

Sorry for the picture quality but I wanted to include photographic evidence of Bodhi's breakthrough!

Well this weekend was a roller coaster ride of emotions! First the good news:
Two of the other boarders rode Bodhi this weekend. It is always nice to see your horse being ridden by other people. He had a bit of a ponytude at first and was doing a lot of bulging and refusing to turn. What a buggar! They reached an understanding soon enough though and got some nice work done. One of the things I wanted them to try was to get that left lead. They were amazed at how balanced he is on his right lead going to the left. He really has an amazing counter canter! They could not get him to pick up the left lead either. Bummer. They however thought to ask him for a flying (why didn't I think of that!) and he gave it to them-consistantly! My four year old can do a flying! I was very impressed. So I guess our new game plan is to practice our flying changes to build up strength on his left side. Hopefully this means the left lead canter will be comming soon. We set up a little cross rail course for him as well, as I wanted their opinions on how Bodhi is progressing over fences (they are jumper people). He did great for them, and is even starting to develop some grace over fences. He took one 2 ft verticle at the end of their ride with no problem. What an improvement to my nervous little clutz. I guess he has a future as a hunter pony after all- and who knows maybe cross country? I am so stoked!

On to the bad news-
I went out to grab a few of my things left at my old barn. I talked a little bit about what happened in this post here. Besides the things I found at her farm I have been taking the end of our friendship pretty hard. It really hurts to be ignored and forgotten and I have been having a pretty hard time of it. I have been trying to avoid seeing or talking to her to save myself the heart ache.

I had not seen her horses since I left in June. It looks like they had not had their feet done since I left. I am also aware they have not seen the vet as the vet has called me conserned. The older fellow who was in bad shape when I left is now worse- I would say a 1 on the weight scale though I am not a vet. He was gaining weight slowly back from his founder episode with a lot of beat pulp, senior and alfafa. I wanted him to be fed three times daily though she was not up for that. There was only senior at the farm now, no beet pulp, no alfafa or even hay. They do have some grass left but not enough for an oldman like this guy. His feet were horrific. His toes are insanely long, and one of his front feet was warm. There were flies everywhere, and the stalls were dirty. I was devastated. What am I going to do now? I think I will call her parents (she lives on their property) or my vet. I have not decided yet. At this point the old man is bad enough to be charged for it. I do not want to be a "tattle", or get her in trouble but this has to stop. I have a broken heart over this, I have not slept since I saw it. Everytime I close my eyes I see the poor old man. I have to figure out what to do and fast. I am so torn.

Vertically Challenged

Bodhi Has been improving with keeping a bend and not falling into the inside. Probably as I am doing better about not dropping my outside rein. It is amazing that he so green yet most of our problems can be solved with a change in my equitation. Like he is just waiting for me to get with the program! Like when I don't have my elbows bent he just fusses and fusses and then the light bulb goes on in my head and I fix it and he just drops into the bit and drives forward from behind. I can just hear him say "finally idiot! I was wondering when you were going to fix that" Sometimes I wonder who is training who.
Jumping is another story. Poor Bodhi. He just doesn't get it. I have never trained a horse to jump that is so naturally ungifted before. He either falls over it or runs through it. This is the first time since I got him that I miss owning a big Thoroughbred. Yesterday I schooled him over this little oxer (I mean baby tiny). He was doing better and relaxing his back so I gave him alot of rein and the little booger tried to refuse! I of course went into hunter training mode and schooled him over the fence several more times, but it broke my heart to feel him bouncing against my legs wanting to evade. How can he be sooo bad and sooo unwilling. I stopped him after a bit and realized how much he was blowing. He was completely spent. I felt horrible. No wonder he had started to try and refuse I was over working him. What would have been super easy task for a big Thoroughbred is really hard for my little haflinger. I should not have pushed him so hard. I need to sit back and figure out a new strategy to get him more confident over fences while challenging him enough that he takes an interest. I need to possibly take some over fences lessons my self.