Lovely day yesterday with my family. Tony back from filming in France and both our daughters home as well so office work sorted by the morning then home early so that we could go to the movies together. Quick visit into Bath to see a dog client this morning – a difficult case but the owner is just wonderful and very, very dedicated to helping her dog. Horses fantastic and Claude is working well. He had a saddle on today (no bit yet) and took it all in his very long stride. He is struggling to back over poles so we will put chest lines on him tomorrow to teach him how to shift his centre of gravity backwards. This is such an important exercise for horses as most horses only learn to stop and shift their centre of gravity from signals on their head which is probably partly why so many youngsters lose balance once the rider is on board. We do not lunge the horses in circles so chest line driving is an important step before long lining from the head collar. Why do we use the lines on the head collar? The weight of a long line is quite extreme even when the line is neutral and attaching it to the bit in a youngster that is also changing teeth can inadvertently teach them to draw back and work behind the vertical which is obviously not what we want in the ridden horse.
Tony is taking care of the pony, donkeys, dogs and cats at home. We have two girls here on work experience and I will teach them the principles of clicker training before heading off to see a human client. I hope the weather is nice tomorrow as I want to take some photographs of Claude working so that I can include them in my next blog!