Mary & Pepsi- Groundwork: 7/15

Since I didn't have a lot of time today I just pulled Pookie-head out of the pasture to do some grounwork with him. I had a few problems, which led to a few "A-ha!" moments, so overall it was good.

We started by just doing some light lunging and driving over ground poles. He still doesn't seem to understand this concept. He constantly tries to walk AROUND the ground poles! Which, technically, is quite smart...except that's not what I want!! Anyway, he finally went over them with no fuss so we stopped with that and moved onto the next thing. (Side note- my poor horse has the slobbers right now, and when I stopped him next to the orange traffic cone that we have in the ring to use as a marker, he picked it up while my head was turned and got nasty green slime ALL over it!! But hey, at least he's not spooking at it! :p)

Next, I decided to USE that cone to do some de-spooking work with him! (You know, just to make SURE it wasn't going to scare him!!) This is where the really bad part happens! I'd tossed it over his head, and neck, and back once from each side, and am going to toss it over his head area again. (I like that he can SEE it go past his eyes as it comes down.) So, I toss it, it goes over beautifully, is coming down, and a GUST OF WIND comes up and BLOWS the cone into his face!!! He flipped out of course (who can blame him?!?) and freaked out! Poor thing! I felt TERRIBLE!

Now please understand- this cone was NOT being thrown AT him! I was throwing it OVER him, and it was just arcing down when the wind just happened to hit it when it was face level and blew it straight at him! (Because of COURSE it couldn't have blown it beside him, or away from him, or ANYWHERE but TOWARD HIM!!!) :(

Anyway, after I calmed him down I let him sniff the cone and I did some more despooking with it until he was good. Rubbing it on him, tossing it AWAY from him, and then finally tossing it over his back again. I still feel guilty, even though there's certainly no way I could have predicted what would happen!!

From there we worked on sidepass and some walk, trot, halt transitions. He was good with all of those so I decided to set up a jump! (This was the part I had the most trouble with at the clinic, so I wanted to work on it at home!) The jump wasn't big, 2 feet at most (and probably more like 18") but Pepsi cleared it like it was a giant oxer! It took me a few times to get him over it (I kept looking at his head when he got up to the jump when I should have been looking at his hip!) but we finally worked through my miscommunication. Once I got that then he was perfect.

I pretty much ended on that since it took the longest time to get through, and I wanted to end on a really good note. He got lots of rubs and pets, and then got some grazing time before going back to the field!

Oh, and when we got back to the field he pulled up a nice clump of grass with the roots still hanging on it, tried to shake the dirt off the roots, and ended up clobbering me in the face with a giant clod of dirt! I'd say it was an accident, but I'm pretty sure it was actually payback for the cone incident earlier.

You know what they say- Payback's a bitch! :D