17th May 2010

The weekend workshop was full and great fun.  The dogs all did really well and I so enjoy teaching with my colleague and co-author Marie Miller.  We have plans to start some classes for trainers so must put my mind to that over the summer.  The young mare arrived on Sunday evening and we took her into the arena for the first time today.  She is a real poppet. She was concerned about the labyrinth at first but after making the exercise simpler by re-organising the poles she was able to negotiate her way through the maze by the end of the session.  She is very nervous about walking over poles so I made an arrow head with a wide opening which we will gradually narrow until she is able to step over the poles without panicking. It’s a nice way to chunk the exercise down so that the horse learns confidence rather than being forced to walk over the poles.  I love starting young horses and MUST remember to video some of the sessions.  We always say we will but get so carried away working with them that by the time I remember to get the cameras out there are already significant changes and I have already missed the steps to building a horse’s confidence if they are worried about walking between two poles.  It’s dentist day tomorrow so I will get up early to do the animals and work with the little mare before the vet and dental technician arrive as she will be having her teeth done later in the morning.  I will then do some more training with Cookie Dough Dynamo who mastered the art of skittle playing in about two seconds flat, start painting the walls and get ready for my last days filming on Over the Rainbow on Wednesday.

This entry was posted on 18. May 2010 at 18:34 and is filed under Sarah Fisher. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.