The lunge

Time for another little update. Like I'd planned I did start to lunge Crispin once a week. I started sometime in may and he picked up the concept quite quickly.

Never the less it took me sometime to be confident enough in his abilities to actually try to take some pictures of him on the lunge. He's very sensitive to my body language and I did not want to confuse him (being my physically chalenged self, handeling pony, lunge, whip and camera at the same time) ;-)

Here are some pictures:

Walk:



Trot:



Sporting his new (well borrowed but new to him) attire:

Fun and Games

Most of his time Crispin spends with his herd. Today I give you the chance to take a look at how he spends his free time without me:

Playing rough!

The little guy he's playing with is Imber a Camargue horse. Poor guy has to put up with a lot because Chrispin does not get tired of this game, ever...

Measured and weighed

Once a year the barn owner invites to have the horses weighed and measured.

Sunday was the day. After a little bit of hesitation Crispin bravely went on the scale and got weighed:

445 Kg. More than I though.

And they measured him too. 156 cm. I'm not quite sure I want belive that, even though they mesured him twice (he didn't like the lady with the measuring stick too much).

Babysteps

Today I did it. The first little bit of lunging.

After six or more weeks of doing basically nothing but hand grazing I decided that it was time for the next step.

Unfortunately the outdoor ring was a muddy mess and in the indoor ring my trainer was giving an unscheduled lesson to one of the pony girls. Damn. But I was set on training so training it would be.

The problem with indroducing Crispin to lunge is that I have to use a different approach from what would be ideal. I could not start with free lunging him. We're not allowed to free lunge in the indoor, we don't have a round pen, and the outdoor ring is waaaaay to big. So I decided to try the T-Team approach by unsing diffent leading positions and go from there. I had done the "leading between both hands" and "leading from a distant" with Chrispin before, but had not done any in hand training for weeks. Plus my trainer was in the idoor watching and suddenly I was unaccountably very nervous. So Crispin decided that nervous was the way to be. he spooked when a horse passed him at canter and wasn't willing to concentrate on my. Great, now my Trainer robably thinks that we're set on disaster!

After a couple of minutes Crispin calmed down (like he ALWAYS does) and the first try to lunge him went really well. He got the concept after a minute or two. Good Boy!

We've worked on lunging two more times and he really got it now I think. He stops, walks, trots (only for 2-3 rounds each time) on both hands on the lunge and is really relaxed. Clockwise is his favourite direction.

...everybody sing...

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

(actually I did make Meike sing for him, he didn't like it) ;-)

Today is Crispin's 3rd Birthday. A day to celebrate and to take some more pictures.

He did grow up since last fall, not only physically but mentally as well(or maybe it's due to the spring) but he's no baby anymore he's a teenager now. He knows everything is playing rough and is questioning me now and then (in his charming and easily controlable way) but still he has changed.

Third Freejumping

For the third and the last time (until fall at least) we did some freejumping on sunday. And once again Crispin did well. I asked him to do a little more this time and as always it was interesting to see him working things out.

At the beginning he seemed a little overmotivated and a little subchallenged. Once things got a little more challenging he was more carefull and not rushing as much. I really like the last round, because here for the first time he's keeping his rhythm, trusting the distance (two strides) of the combination.

Untitled from AmityBee on Vimeo.

Besides the freejumping there isn't much else to report. Things are nicely boring. We started to hand graze the horses about 10 days ago so pasture season should be on it's way.

Tarps and Tapes

Another big thing on my to-do list is desensetizing/de-spooking Crispin, especially if I'm really going through with the plan of showing him in the "Gelassenheitsprüfung an der Hand" at the Bundeschau. Only problem?! I have no talent and even less motivation of doing so!

So... ...why not doing things a little differently and let the herd do my job!

On saturday I started to put up some "scarry" stuff in the paddock (I only put the stuff in as long as I'm there and take it out again before I leave). The first thing was a "Flattervorhang" made out of red and white barrier tape. Crispin was intrigued the rest of the herd could't care less. Perfect situation!

Crispin watched the other horses for while (they were walking through the tape or were ripping little pieces of tape off) and after they were done he inspected the tape himself, trying out everything he'd seen. Very cute! (Of course he was rewarded with cookies for that!)

A few days latter I added the tarp (well, actually it's a trash bag). I knotted it to the Flattervorhang, no big deal!





Then I put in on the ground. It was scarry at first...



...but then he went for the kill...



...and shredded the thing into pieces!



The next step was steping on the tarp. He needed a bit of encouragement at first.



Good Boy!



Destruction!