After having free access to a horse of my own and practicing all sorts of groundwork tricks on her, I was pretty confident I knew what I was doing regarding groundwork and horses.
Apparently other people thought I knew what I was doing and so I got a phone call to ask if I could teach a pony to go on a float when asked. He had been fine before the people bought him (apparently) but if there was no friend already in the float he would fight energetically to not go on the float. He was pulling the owner all over the place and after 2 hours of effort they decided not to go to pony club.
I agreed and was a bit nervous about trying it on a pony I didn't know WITH PEOPLE WATCHING. Everything went fine and within 1 hour I had had him on and off the float half a dozen times. The first half hour was spent chasing him in the round yard so the actual floating effort only took about 15 minutes. I told the man to try again the next day without me so that if there was going to be a problem it wasn't going to be when they were trying to get somewhere. It went badly so I went and worked with the pony again and showed the man an easier technique to apply discomfort and release accurately regarding obedience and they didn't have a problem again.
I then got invited to pony club to teach some classes to the kids and their ponies about horsemanship and teaching horses new tricks.
No comments:
Post a Comment