I'm OK With Baby Steps

We managed to walk willingly one third of the way around the arena.

Don’t laugh! It was a major accomplishment.

Not surprisingly, Ace didn’t magically forget his resistance to going forward under saddle after three weeks of ground work. I was so hoping that getting his respect and response back on the ground would transfer easily to saddle. No go.

I lunged him first. He responded to my voice and body language commands immediately. He trotted round and round with his ears up. He was relaxed. Didn’t show a hint of resistance.

Then I got into the saddle. I sat there for a few minutes without asking anything. Then I worked on getting him to move his hindquarters. He’s pretty responsive to that, and in the past it’s been very good for sensitizing him to my legs. He moved off the pressure well. I didn’t have to get too insistent and he responded quickly and crossed his legs nicely.

I gently asked for a step forward, and immediately his head went up and his muscles bunched and he didn’t even think about behaving. I got more insistenent with my legs. I added in some heel. I started alternating bumps with my legs and taps with the whip. And he leaned forward.

It was a try anyway.

We kept at this for awhile, maybe getting 2-3 steps at a time.

I know the pressure-and-release response is that you start asking as lightly as possible, and get stronger until the horse gives any kind of try. Unfortunately, Ace has a pretty high tolerance threshhold and I have to get pretty serious with him before he’ll finally respond. Stinker.

But anyway. We’d creep 2-3 steps at a time. And I’d reward that as a try.

And then I realized that he was taking advantage of that instead of learning from it. He knows very well what I’m asking him to do. The dominant horse in him was just refusing to do it.

So, I got insistent and got my two or three steps and still kept after him. We got five or six.

The next time, I kept after him until he just started walking and didn’t fight every step.

And he did!

He walked a third of the way around the arena, relaxed and willing. I stopped him and got off.

If it’s anything like the lunging issues we worked through, that was a major victory for me. When he finally gave in and just went with the lunging, I let him walk around once and then quit for the day. And he did exponentially better after that. I hope it’s the same for this!