Gia - session 24 - Gia tests Katie's buttons


From Katie:

Yesterday was a bit of a rough day with Gia. Like before, I turned on the clippers and put them in the cross ties across from where I was going to put Gia. Only this time they were in front of her. When I brought her in, she was very interested in the noise, and she wanted to check them out. She walked over to where they were and touched the pan they were in. After that, when I was grooming and tacking her, she didn’t have a problem with them at all.  At one point, I left her standing in the cross ties for about 10 minutes to help with another horse, and while she did fidget some while I was gone, she stood quietly for the most part. Then I took her up to the round pen and free lunged her with the boat bumpers at her girth. As usual, she was really good for this, so I moved the bumpers to her flank and put the lunge line on her. That’s when a few problems came up, I was having a hard time getting her to move away from me when she was on the line. I wasn’t really sure how to handle the situation, so I asked Heather to come up and talk me through what to do. I used the whip to get her to move away from me and onto a circle. At first, she was not happy about having to work, so she was throwing a few fits and trying to stop and come back to the middle. Each time, I used the whip to keep her going until she moved on the circle on her own. She did buck a lot more than usual today, but that was because she was frustrated with me not because of the boat bumpers on her side. It took a while to get her to canter quietly both directions without her being upset, but we got there by the end.

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