I’ve ridden Tabby a few times since the last blog post, but if I blog about every uneventful ride of circles, halts, and transitions, someone might think I was a card or two short of a full deck. And we certainly don’t want that. Even if it is true some days.
Last night Kayla and her brother, Jessie, came out to do some volunteer work with the horses. A lot of help that I need is grooming, lunging, and riding. As the two are intermediate riders, they’ll be a great help for giving some of the more experienced horses some exercise, but neither of them knew much about lunging or riding a green horse. Jessie wants to adopt Abby when she’s ready, so we got Tabby saddled and Abby on the lunge line for the first time. I started with Abby, giving Jessie some pointers and the basics of lunging: stand at her hip to make her move forward, move to her shoulder when asking for a whoa, move in a smaller circle within her circle to stay at her hip, use consistent voice commands. Abby seems to have had a little training on the lunge, but she still insisted on turning into Jessie at every opportunity.
After Jessie was on his way with Abby, I gave Tabby over to Kayla for a lunging lesson. Tabby is much better on the lunge, so after a few minutes of Kayla proving that she had the knack of it, I went ahead and mounted up.
As usual, Tabby stood perfectly still for mounting. She’s moving off my leg much better now and feels so much stronger and sure of herself under saddle. Her halts are getting much better and she doesn’t toss her head as much and stops when I roll back on my seat before I even ask with the reins. She’s also getting better about standing still. I’d like to get her out on the trail, but need to wait until someone can go with me on another horse for safety’s sake.
As I was finishing up with Tabby, I asked Jessie if he wanted to ride her for a few minutes. He wants to be involved in Abby’s training and is a quick learner when it comes to riding. At first, Tabby didn’t want to pay attention to Jessie and just followed me around. Eventually, he had her doing as he asked and the two looked great together.
Next week when the kids come out, Tabby will be ready for a short trail ride. Sounds like fun!
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