On Monday, we took advantage of the 70° weather & Hickory got a bath. He stood great, even though it's been a while since his last bath. Tuesday's temps dipped down below freezing again with windy & snow so everyone got a good rest day.
Wednesday was spend prepping for JD to some lend us a hand on Thursday afternoon. We did some more ponying, which has gotten a lot better. He's able to trot & lope alongside Badger & me in the arena or down the lane. He responds to yielding his HQ & FQ & will also lunge a bit around us.
On Thursday, JD took him from the get-go & got to know him a bit. Several times, he mentioned that he obviously has a mind on him. He was happy with how soft he was, just put things in front of him to think through. JD utilized a tarp for general sacking out, then he attached it to a rope & let it drag & bounce against Hickory while he asked for movement. There were a few hairy moments when Hickory got worrying about it around his hindquarters, but they worked past that. From there, he laid the tarp on the ground & had him walk over it, which Hickory did willingly. JD did a little bit of ponying from his saddle horse, who happened to be a mare, & we did some more Pick Me Up Off the Fence type work from the fence & from the mounting block. From there, it was obvious that Hickory was pretty relaxed & nearly falling asleep (though I joked that's exactly what I thought when I stepped on him the first time 😉), so we progressed to having me step up on him. While JD was impressed with how ubersoft Hickory is, we decided that need to have a bit more rein during the mounting process as that seems to be where he felt a little claustrophobic. We took baby steps, getting the right expression from him as I stepped into the stirrup, raised up & rubbed on him, asked him to take a couple steps with his hindquarters while I was in that position, & ensured that I could cause a bit of commotion on that off side without worry. Several times after I would step down, he would lick & chew & give several big yawns. While I've seen that from Hickory a few times during our work, it was obvious we had unlocked something. While I would have loved to get a full-blown ride, we had thrown a lot at Hickory mentally & we opted to end on that high note. That's one of the big reasons that I picked JD to lend a hand & see what he thought about Hickory, as he's a horseman who doesn't care about pushing towards an agenda, just in building confidence in the horse & leaving them better than when he started.
Today, we continued to build upon what we had done yesterday. He's understandably probably a little muscle sore with me hanging off of him yesterday, so I tried to keep things brief. I got a great response from him even though it was after sunset & Randy was loading feed in the back of the pickup.
Next week, we'll continue to work towards an initial longer duration sit as we build his confidence with someone on his back & hopefully we'll have a successful first official ride on by the end of the week.
For now, I'll send your March invoice for the full month. I'd like to put a bit more time on Hero, potentially through the end of April if feasible, & we can chat about how you'd like to proceed with Hickory. I've also not received payment for your February invoice.
I'm going to subtract the cost of the Equilab daily updates as it's come to my attention from another client that it doesn't seem to be letting you guys see the entries on your end. I'm hoping I can work with Equilab to get this fixed, but for now, I'm just going to refund it since you're not able to view what you've paid for.
- Lexy Nuesch
Next week's update will be posted on Friday.
Comments