Wednesday, January 2, 2013

Fiera in training

So today I had thought I would ride Fiera but when push came to shove, loud school children and being alone in the pasture got to me and I didn't ride. I tacked her up to pony her off liberty and then realized that the girth I had put on her was the same one Liberty needed for his saddle so in the end it was all ground work.

I 'drove' her tacked and saddled around the pasture. I wanted to Practice the reining technique of only guiding her when I meant to and other wise leaving her mouth alone. At first it was easy but then the other horses in other pastures got riled up and that gave me something to practice keeping her attention over. It got kind kind of exciting because I didn't have a lead an she was acting very Bucky very close to me. So we walked in to make some tack changes.

I used the bit I have always used and she kept chewing on it so I swapped to Oly' s but and the excessive chewing stopped. (Note to self, no one likes that other bit; sell it and buy another Myler). After changing bits and adding a lead things were good for another little while but she got tired of working and when I flipped the line at her or a whoa she went into a bucking and rearing fit that made me happy I wasn't riding. She was determined to have her way and I want not going to influence her. But I did. So we did more ground work, some lingering at different speeds and lots of direction changes. I do believe I had the last laugh.

Not sure when I will ride her again. I'm not convinced I have a saddle that fits and I think I'd like to see her not have such a temper first. I was going to take her to Stillwater but that's not going to work out right now. Getting a new stove and moving Maggie's horse to Azle is killing my training budget. I will have to settle for lessons for now.





2 comments:

Equus Spirit said...

Hi, Alice,

Sounds like this one is a strong minded little mare! I've got one, too-name's is Mekdes, but we call her Cricket for her antics. This one simply refuses to take a bit-just won't. She insists that she wasn't meant to carry metal in her mouth. I can worm her, fiddle with her mouth, but no bit without a huge fight.

She's hyper-sensitive, too. The least thing is enough with her. I generally use cruppers-so thought I'd get her used to one-nothing doing. She bucked so hard she threw it off AND pulled the staple out of the back of the saddle! Am I riding her yet? Oh, heck, no. We still have some negotiations to do. It's not that I think she'd intentionally hurt me-she's just opinionated as all hell.

Glad to know you're doing this-it helps me to work with Cricket. She's a looker, but a challenge!

Alice Perryman said...

I had an awesome lesson with Fiera with a trainer two weeks ago. I have been sick and had bad weather since or I would be having another lesson tomorrow. So, we practice for a week and then have a lesson next Saturday. I need to blog about my lesson. It was really awesome.

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