Monday, a good friend and long time working student of mine Katie Jensen came over to watch me work with the mustang with a fellow boarder. Katie has watched me start two young horses before, her pony Roses and her friends pony Jupiter. I started both these horses knowing that they were destined to be kids horses and needed to be safe for them. She and her friend must be satisfied because today she brought another friend out to see Eclipse. She is in the market for a horse for her 8 year old daughter who has been riding a year and has shown great potential. I got Eclipse out and worked him on the ground allready saddled. We lunged over logs and barrels to show the perspective bidder his potential as a jumper. We played with putting two feet up on the pedestal, and loading into the trailer with the saddle on. Trying to wedge himself on the straight load trailer with the western saddle on was a little more challenging then when Eclipse is naked! After a few tries he managed enough courage to get all four feet on with the saddle. I decided to start my ride in the grass arena/play yard for a change. The upper arena is only partially enclosed, I guess you can say we started out of the box.
For the most part he did really well. He started out distrackted by all the open space so we started with circle at the trot. Once I felt his mind was more on his buisness we started working the whole arena area. Any time he would get distracted I would circle and refocus him. After about twenty minutes we worked up to a canter and started a clover leaf pattern where I cut the arena in half longways and short ways . This is a great pattern to help teach a horse steering at the canter. One thing that has improved over the last few rides is Eclipse's balance at the canter and him understanding when to stop. He is starting to get really consistent picking up his right lead missing it only once this ride. After the work out portion of our ride we went up the hill to the play yard and worked on crossing logs, bridges and the other obstacles we found there. Just for grins, I went up to the pedestal to see if he would step up on it with me on his back. One foot after the other he put his front feet on and up we went. His confidence and cordination growing by the day. In the end I think Katie's friend was impressed with learning capability that Eclipse had displayed. She will be back more towards the end of his training with her daughter to see if they are a good match. My hope is that I can find local bidder so that I can be apart of Eclipse's transition to a new home!
I came back later Monday evening and got the bug to work with Eclipse again so I decided to put on a bareback pad and see how things would go. One of the benifits of riding bareback is that the horse can really feel every leg cue and weight shift that the rider does. Taking advantage of that opportunity I focused on clarifying moving the front end (turn on the haunches) and moving the hind quarters (turn on the forehand) and introducing leg yields down the fence. Once we did that we went off at the trot. Sencing the different feeling of bare back Elipse actually offered a slower trot then he does under saddle. Thankful of the easier ride, I was able to relax and get into a groove with him. Very cool to feel the connection.
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