Monday, April 11, 2011

Duke's Gun Training

Lisa D and I have had several sessions with Duke as we try to get him re-adjusted. I again tied up Charlie in the nearby round pen and had Lisa ride Duke around the gray pen. We have had steady progress with Duke and got to the point where he could handle the cap pistol from about 20 feet away. Today, however, he plateaued in his training. As Lisa rode him in a circle in front of me, Duke would get agitated as he got close to me. Not really badly, but not good enough to progress to the next level of training. I had her increase his gait from walk to trot to see if the extra speed would calm him down, but it didn't seem to work. We will stay at this level until Duke progresses some more.

After we finished with Duke, I did some work with Charlie who is starting to muscle up very nicely. After his colic surgery in August, his back end atrophied and he looked pretty pathetic. Not so much now. He's starting to show his "guns" back there. I worked him in the round pen, concentrating on turns in a specific direction and changing gaits on command. Most of our horses know the words "walk", "trot", and "gallop", so I build on this. Charlie, although basically lazy, can really get wild when his dander is up. I'm trying to get some respect down with him before I get up and have to push him hard from the saddle. He's a friendly horse for the most part and is a pleasure to work with most of the time. However, after several trips to the emergency room over the years, I've learned that taking things slow works best for horse training.

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