Sunday, September 21, 2008

Home Early

Yes, I am home early. I got home Saturday afternoon just in time to play with fabulous Fabio! As an update on our progress, Sundance's figure eights at liberty are now awesome. We finished 2 more tasks (2 left and almost done) in stage 3, our flank rope task and circling game (w-t-c-s-w-t-c-) are done as of today and the last 2 tasks are breezing by. Stage 4 is also looking really easy, we can already do 98% of it, and about the same for stage 5 which is really exciting because once I finish stage 4 I will be half way done with level 3! In a matter of about 5 months! How exciting! I can't believe how well Sundance is doing, everything is so PERFECT! I LOVE THIS! It is amazing.

Little Beebsters starting back his playing session after recovering from an almost broken nose, I sent this email to a couple instructors and should clear some things up for all of you...

 

Hello ________ ,

I've got a little puzzle for you. I have been trying very hard the past 2 months or so to figure this one out, and am getting a little progress but not as much as I should be getting in this length of time. Bebe my 5 year old quarter horse LBE dominant / RBI ( ? very hard to determine absolute horsenality), has done very well with Level one and two, been a star actually. Then the beginnings of Level 3 have been great, until he had to get out on that 45 foot line in the circling game. I have worked through, with him, a lot of fear of getting out there 45 feet away from mom. He didn't seem comfortable at all without mom holding his hand, but now with some brain storming he can get out there a lot better. He started to feel comfortable and get the idea when we did some one rein type driving where I ask him sideways until his HQ's are toward me and then ask him to move on until he finds the end of the line and then proceed onto the circle, and if I wiggle the carrot stick towards zone 2 he needs to face out and get out a little farther. This has gotten good at the walk, and got a lot better at the trot as of today. Where things go wrong is where he "suddenly" explodes, here are the series of events. Something (who knows what or 'who' is that something) disturbs him, he squeals loud (sounds dominant) and jumps in the air and canters, therefore gets his adrenaline up which makes him go right brained, when he feels he can get a hold of himself or needs my direction he very abruptly stops and tries to come to me. Sometimes when he stops he re-explodes and goes back out, all the while I try to keep very low confident energy. I am not sure why he does this, he can go from LB to RB and then back to LB in a matter of seconds and I am not sure what is triggering this. I would love your thoughts and help on this!

Thanks so much in advance!

Mariah Helms

Bebe is an amazingly smart horse that has a lot of potential, but we've just hit a little rut that I need a little help with. After we get past this everything else will fall in place, it always does, that is why I am not discouraged. Remember my Success and Failure post? Just what I am talking about, I can't wait to figure this puzzle out because it's going to be really fascinating!

I've got school, and a couple of lessons this week, my breeches will be in tomorrow (Monday), a couple of birthday parties for my brother and father, choir, orthodontist, farrier, ambassador duties around southern NC, and practice at Charlotte's for the weekend and of course playing with my babies everyday (my favorite part)! So I have a busy week, and am looking forward to it. Hope all of you have an amazing week too! Will update after next session.

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