2022 Riding Journey

#28 Muddy Groundwork

Because of the rain we had received this weekend (which we are grateful for), the ground was too wet to ride in.   Thus, my lesson along with James consisted of groundwork.  

Three of the Show horses have stayed for the lesson program at my trainer's.  Maisy, Candy Sue, and Jim Bean, who is a 14.1 hh skewbald gelding.  My trainer gave Jim Bean to James to work with, grabbed another horse for herself, and told me that I could basically pick from any horse on the place.  Including client horses.  

Well,  I didn't feel like working with horses who weren't already established in groundwork, beings that I myself am not that established in it either.  I also didn't want to have to play the 'catching game' with Lily or Mariah or Twister.  

Thus, Riggs was my pick.  She would be easy to catch, she wouldn't glare daggers at me, and she knew groundwork.  

Sure enough, she let me catch her easily.  We didn't bother to groom the horses,  there really wasn't any point, so I just led Riggs out to the big outdoor arena. 

My trainer asked me something along the lines of "What do you want to do?" And I was just like, "Well, I don't know much about groundwork..."  So she told me to do some stuff with Riggs and feel her out.

Getting Riggs to move out on a circle wasn't hard.  I let her move out, did some circles, then asked her a couple of times to move her hindquarters, then go back on the circle.  Did some changes of direction too.  

Overall, Riggs was responding well, if not just a bit lazily.  When my trainer asked me what I thought of her, I told her that.  She kinda laughed, and said that most of Riggs's groundwork of late had been done with little kids.  Thus, Riggs was a bit slow and rusty.  

She told me one way to get a horse out of that, was to stand off by their side in line with their shoulder.  Then you'd ask them to move their forefeet to the side, and change direction that way.  But you'd be ready to really "drive them through it".  Another thing was to do some halt - walk transitions on the circle.

So I did this.  Sure enough, it perked Riggs up somewhat.  I had to remind myself to be concise and quick.  Not aggressive, but just making sure to follow up with my actions, making sure they came one after the other, with no pause in between them.

The next exercise she gave to me was to move Riggs's hindquarters like I'd done before, from the circle or from a standstill, and then either let her halt, or send her back on the circle, or make her back up.  I was to add the back-ups in sporadically, so that she wouldn't know when they were coming.  This would make her have to stay more balanced on her hindquarters and light on her forefeet.  

So I did some of this.  The backing up didn't work very well at some points.  One problem was that I was having her turn to face me enough.  But the other was that, with Shorty, I ask them to back up  by coming up to their side and pressing on their shoulder or pulling back on the lead rope.  My trainer does it by stepping towards them while 'bumping' the lead rope if needed.  

So, some of our back ups were better than others, but Riggs was beginning to get the point.  However, my trainer added something else. She said I needed to be doing the backing up when Riggs wasn't ready for it. And if she did show herself ready, then I could let her go back on the circle or halt.  I worked on this, and it did help.

Then, after that, my trainer told me to raise my hand up and out to indicate to Riggs that she was to pick up a trot.  Riggs wasn't mentally ready for this, physically she could have picked up a trot when I asked, but mentally she was still a little bit in lazy mode.  

My trainer had me step towards her and swing the end of the lead rope to her very firmly to wake her up.  Just a few of these transitions later, Riggs was picking up the trot when I asked for it just by raising my hand.