One day in december I got a call from a good friend of mine. Tonje at throughtonjeslens had an exam for her photo course this semester, and she was wondering if she could take some pictures of Bosco. I have always wanted some nice pictures of Bosco so of course we said yes!
Here are the results, copyright Tonje B. Langen!
And the last one was not part of the exam, just a cute picture ^^
2011 is over and I have had a look at what I have been doing over the past year. Since my memory is sligtly off I have been looking at pictures, which I am actually quite good at organizing so I know what happened, and when.
This year I have found my way of training, I have gain so much more feel for riding and the improvement in both me and Bosco is huge. The sad part is that it doesn’t show as well as I feel it. When I look at pictures and films from different clinics I’m often disappointed by what I see, because it feels so much better that it actually looks. This means that my feel for riding has improved quite alot, because I feel a huge change in the horse, but that change is hard to see for most other people. There are a few exeptions who have followed my trainig closely who can see the changes better than others, but long ways to go yet. I do believe all this basic work and the slow process will pay up in the end, and I do feel improvement from month to month. And I have time.
Anyhow, here is my video with images from different clinics and happenings throughout the year. Accompanied by music from Grove Horn, my brothers band.
Another clinic finished, happy rider and tired horse as a result.
In the beginning of the lesson, I explained to Andrew the different difficulties we have encountered since last clinic in September. Bosco is somewhat uneven in his movements, and sometimes he almost feels like he is lame, but he isn’t. He has been treated by the chiropractor, have his teeth done, and I never notice anything while out hacking. I have talked to many people about this, including my vet and figured out he just needs to build up again.
In the first lesson I was tought a new aid for relaxation in the neck. I often use the passive resistant to get Bosco to accept the reins, and round his neck on to the rein. Sometimes it works out like it should, and other times I get too “eager” and I’m not as stable in the hand as I should be. So now we used the “parade”. The parade is when you lift up the inside rein so that you lift the bit up into the upperpart of the mouth and creat a different feel for the horse. It took some time before I got the hang of it, and I can see in the pictures that I sometimes lift the hand too near myself and that way pull too much. But after a while we got the hang of it, and Bosco started to relax his neck, especially at the poll. By using this aid we want him to stretch his neck out of the withers, round the neck and stretch down on to the contact.
During this lesson I felt it was going the right way, but it wasn’t until I got home I actually saw the result. I was going through the photos taken during the lesson, apart from being very fuzzy two of them really stood out to me. Just look at the difference between the front and back. His withers has just popped up!
This lesson we used the inside rein in different positions to make Bosco relax his neck. To make the horse understand the small signals, you have to teach it to them by using bigger letters. What we did was to start out with a prade, where I lift my hand and by doing that lifting the bit away from the bars. After the parade, take the hand inwards in a half-circle- motion and down to where it is when I use the passive resistant. Which is quite low, then a yield forwards. After I got this movement quite right, we used the half-seat aswell. After the passiveressistnat fase, go in a half-seat and stretch the reins down and forwards alont the horses shoulders. When I do this I encourage him to lift his back and go on to the contact. When I sit back down, his head goes up and he tenses if I’m not carefull. And after a while I’m able to do this without him getting disturbed or tense.
Here are two videos from the first lesson. If you are wondering about what all the noise is, it is rain and wind. To me it sounded like the roof was about to come off. But Bosco didn’t even notice. (but rocks(?!) he is afraid of….)
The next lesson we had on friday morning, and we almost missed it, because Bosco had no intentions on staying on the trailer. He walks on quite voluntarily, but runs back out again. I had almost given up when we finally got him to stand still long enough for Inga to close the door. Drove as fast and safe as I could with a horse trailer, and was “only” about 10 minutes late.
We kept working on the same things as we did yesterday, making him more flexible in the neck. This lesson we also started on the lateral movements, both shoulder in and leg yield. We have done shoulder in loads of times before, but the leg yields have often resulted in too much tension. This time it went quite well. I managed to get him “back” if he tensed up or drifted away. We also did leg yields where we did a turn on the forehand where the leg yield met the centre line.
The theory session on thursday was interesting as always, if I’m able to wrap my mind around it after my exams I’ll write a more theory aimed blog. I have wanted to do that for quite some time, but haven’t really had the time for it.
This pictures were taken on thrusday, when it was still quite windy, but the clouds where almost gone, and I tried to get some nice pictures of Bosco. Unfortunately he was so tired after the lesson that he didn’t really want to lift his head. Should have had a photoshoot before the lesson!
Finally! I have been waiting for the frost to get here so that Boscos new pasture would freeze up and not be so muddy. Well the frost came, and the pasture is useless! It’s uneven so it would mean asking for an injury to put horses there. The past week we have had a few days in a row with a temperature below cero, and as everyone who has ever owned a horse knows, temperatures below cero, equals crazy horse.
Some extra energy I can handle, a horse that has so much energy he explodes whenever it’s feeding time or trots around me while saddling up, is a bit too much. Not that I can’t handle it, it just makes me sad to see my horse like that. After a little hack with 3 other horses, where Bosco went completely mental and I had to get off and walk him home (altho, I was the one walking, Bosco prefered piaffe all the way home), we decided he had to move from his usual pasture to a bigger one. The one we had, is a bit too small in the first place(in my opinion), but since 1/5 of it had gravel, the rest was mud, you can guess where he was standing all day? yes, the gravel. His white hoof was never dirty while he was in that pasture.
Luckily for us we had a bigger one behind the indoor arena. So on saturday we tried to let out Bosco and two other buddies, Dejavu and Randle. They ran off imidiatly after letting them go, a few rounds then roll around in the mud until they were completely covered. Happy horses! 😀
I get tired of the indoor arena from time to time, so I’m quite sure Bosco does too. So from time to time I have a lunging session out in the field. This isn’t to get a really good work out, but mostly to let him stretch his legs and do what he wants (to a certain extent). So usually he explodes in bucking, rearing and running like a mad man. I tried to get some pictures of this because he can look really beautiful when he wants to, not so easy to take pictures while lungig, but some came out allright.
Yet another Murphy clinic has finished. I’m tired, happy and inspired, as always!
This time I had my own brand new trailer, we had been training and were well prepared for the clinic. To sum up, may clinic was cut short when Bosco refused to go on the trailer the second day. There was no clinic in April and in March Bosco decided to get a hoof abscess the same day as the clinic, so it had been a while since we had a full clinic. Continue reading “Dressage junkie gets another fix”
Bosco had the day off and I brought my camera to see if the happy horses wanted to look pretty. They weren’t really interested and were busy dozing in the sun, but here are some of them. Continue reading “A Sunny Afternoon in Winter Wonderland”
Life, the Universe and Everything 