Gia - session 95 - more lunging and riding
Friday's session went very much like the last few. When I started this blog, my biggest intention was to show folks exactly what goes into training a horse from the ground up. Mostly, the day to day, same thing over and over, repetition repetition, until you are ready to move on. I am definitely in one of those phases with Gia at the moment.
One thing I did slightly different this time was to change how I attached the lunge line. I've been attaching it through the bit on the near side, over the poll and snapped on the bit on the far side. However, I really want her to get more stretch, so this time, I ran it through the bit on the near side and attached it to the girth. This gives me a bit more leverage to help encourage her to reach down more. It definitely helped! We were able to get up to 7 consecutive stretching steps in each direction (I did have to go to the left twice, but I also changed the way I attached the lunge line until after I had gone to the left the first time). I was also able to get a lot of little steps a lot more often.
She stood at the mounting block like a lesson pony (actually, better than some of the lesson ponies 😂). The riding was very repetitive of the last few rides. It went very well, but we are still working on straightness, bending, counterbending, and relaxation. I do have a couple of videos (thank you Jenna!) that I will put in the comments section when I post this to Facebook.
Funny story - I was riding Gia as Jenna was driving up to the barn, and I could see sort of a surprised and excited face on her in her car. When she got out, she ran over to the ring and said something like "I had no idea which horse you were riding! I didn't think it was Annie, and it was too fancy for Butch! She looked like a $50,000.00 horse!". She does have some big shoes to fill in the jumping department, but it sounds like Gia might be something pretty special ...
One thing I did slightly different this time was to change how I attached the lunge line. I've been attaching it through the bit on the near side, over the poll and snapped on the bit on the far side. However, I really want her to get more stretch, so this time, I ran it through the bit on the near side and attached it to the girth. This gives me a bit more leverage to help encourage her to reach down more. It definitely helped! We were able to get up to 7 consecutive stretching steps in each direction (I did have to go to the left twice, but I also changed the way I attached the lunge line until after I had gone to the left the first time). I was also able to get a lot of little steps a lot more often.
She stood at the mounting block like a lesson pony (actually, better than some of the lesson ponies 😂). The riding was very repetitive of the last few rides. It went very well, but we are still working on straightness, bending, counterbending, and relaxation. I do have a couple of videos (thank you Jenna!) that I will put in the comments section when I post this to Facebook.
Funny story - I was riding Gia as Jenna was driving up to the barn, and I could see sort of a surprised and excited face on her in her car. When she got out, she ran over to the ring and said something like "I had no idea which horse you were riding! I didn't think it was Annie, and it was too fancy for Butch! She looked like a $50,000.00 horse!". She does have some big shoes to fill in the jumping department, but it sounds like Gia might be something pretty special ...
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