said KT so I did. I use lunging as a warm up, always with cavaletti and lots of transitions. For us it's not "blowing off steam" because with Arabs it usually doesn't help to settle them down anyway. Also, my horse lives outdoors so she's not all pent up physically.
Today was the first not unbearably hot day in ages. I brought Bellis to the arena too because she loves coming along. I did a little ground work and then got right on Mara.
The geldings have been moved to another pasture which influenced where in the arena Mara wanted to be. The end of the arena she usually loves, she had to be convinced to go in today.
She had no focus at all. She couldn't stop looking at people on the sidewalk in the distance, or the horses in the fields. All those tiny serpentines that normally help, I could barely get her attention.
She even had trouble stopping today, and that's something she's learned to be very good at cuz we've practiced it so much. She also didn't want to stand still, something she's normally happy to do. She was especially annoyed that I made her stand still in the end of the arena furthest from her friends, and facing (oh no) *away* from them!
Dark thoughts started entering my mind because she was so resistant and scattered, ignoring my aids. I had images of her rearing and whirling, but she never did, she just tossed her head and lashed her tail a lot.
I didn't let it end badly, but as soon as we were done I lunged her 40 minutes over cavaletti and cantering various sized circles. It was cool enough out that she barely broke a sweat (just under her saddle).
Then I got back on her again, to see what would happen.
She was perfect. She was very forward, very willing and very loose in her body as well. We practiced everything, and since her trot was so energetic, I decided to let her "fall" into a canter again if she would. I encouraged her faster, faster, let's fly! And finally she slipped into a lovely relaxed canter down the long side (exactly where KT had done it last week). Then I praised her, let her stop, jumped off and rubbed her neck and gave her cookies.
So I learned that lunging doesn't exhaust her, as KT thought, making dressage exercises difficult - it's probably just the weather. On a beautifully cool cloudy day, she's got plenty of gas. Last Thursday she was slow motion horse, unable to find the strength to walk a circle.
I still need to see if the lunging actually makes it easier for her to focus on my aids, or if it was just a coincidence; perhaps we'd simply been in that arena for a long enough period of time that she was able to settle down and listen to me.
My instinct is that lunging has no effect on her mentally, but I'll need to repeat the experiment several times to see.
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3 comments:
It sounds like the longeing helps her focus on you better. I think I would stick with the routine that's been working for you but just longe for a shorter period of time on lesson day or even skip on lesson day so she has a distracted Mara to work with instead of a lazy Mara hehe. She's a trainer so give her something to train LOL. Good luck figuring it out!
You know me: I loveto build a routine so I can shatter it and build a lesson into the process.
You've got plenty of time. Mix it up a bit, and see what you like doing...and then don't ALWAYS do that because some day you won't be able to do it for some dumb reason, and you don't want the world to end there!
We'll be right hear, waiting patiently (well, sorta) to read how it goes.
Achieve, I will do it: )
Aarene, Now that I have a little success tying my horse in the woods, I'm starting to work on separation training. Although it's unlikely the donkey will ever need to go somewhere and leave the horse behind, I may as well teach them how to deal with it. I took Bellis out and tied her out of sight. Mara neighed three times during that hour but did not flip out completely like Baasha would have: )
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