A very expensive walk (Lesson 2 here with Katja)

First thing, Katja checked Mag's back, because the vet had injected him twice Tuesday because of his sebaceous gland infections. (The official English term, I finally found out, which Wiki says is a misnomer, it's keratin.)

Mag failed her back palpation (funny, he never failed mine!) which makes me suspect she wanted to give me a groundwork/liberty lesson because that is her thing. So that's what we did.

Beforehand, I brought her in the house to show her the video of Lukas riding Mag last year, his first and last time before he quit. I wanted her opinion, and she agreed with me that the horse was over-faced, but she said it was due to so much rein contact. Funny, I never noticed. She said Mag wouldn't have been offering to rear, nor rushing backwards and sideways if the reins had been loose. I suppose that is true, but I saw it differently, I saw Lukas asking the horse to bend his body on a small circle, and the horse not being mentally or physically ready for such an exercise (and in the woods!).

Anyway, I told her I wanted to replace that memory with some new good ones in that very location, so let's go there!

On the way Mag was annoyingly grabbing grass and branches, and she said the secret it to keep him busy, but when you're trying to get somewhere, and you only have an hour lesson, well, easier said than done. She says I need to praise him a lot more for the times he is not eating. What to me, amounts to rewarding a horse for walking down the street with me, why on earth would I need to reward that? She said it's about having fun and if he is praised for not eating, he won't be focused on snatching food so often. Also, she said the way I lead, with him behind me, makes it very difficult to prevent. I can usually feel it in the rope, but she's right. However I'm not going to change my leading style, and thankfully she has not asked me to.

We seem to be on the same wavelength with regard to horses, and I feel like we can have a two-way exchange of new ideas. I told her about Resnick's "Chair challenge" and she said, "I'm doing it wrong then, cuz I'm not making money off that idea! It's the first thing I tell my students of troubled horses. Sit in a chair and do nothing." I said, "That's easier for you and me, because we live with our horses. It's hard when you drive a half hour to see your horse, to just sit down in a chair!"

When we got to that bad-memory spot, she asked me to do some ground work, simple circling and halting, Parelli style. So glad Mag knows that because he was 100% perfect today, both directions. I told her, "It is still amazing to me that he will do this exercise based on how much he loathes lunging, and how long he refused to circle me. He still thinks it's stupid, but he does it for me."

Then she had me stand on a stump and do the same thing. Not sure why.

Then stand at a tree by a fallen log so Mag had to step over the log, and it was a hillside so slightly more difficult.

I showed off how he can back over that same fallen log but Mag is still very, very bad at it. He even kicked out twice in annoyance at the feeling of running into it but not being able to see it. She said I should just go even slower, one leg at a time and then rest.

Then something liberty related, which I found interesting. She wanted me to walk with him and then raise my energy - while walking - until Mag trots. I'm like, "Without jogging myself?" Nope. Just your energy will get him to trot. And when he does, you exhale and stop and praise him. That's not gonna work. She said, "He's so tuned into you, go for it, he'll do it."

It worked. I could tense up as if I was going to jog, and quicken my steps a little, and he would start trotting. And on exhale, he'd stop with me. We did it over and over and she said raising and lowering your energy is a key element of horse training. I added, "And from what I've heard, teaching a horse to control its own stress."

I look forward to practicing it because Mag is already attuned to me and bored if we just walk along.

It felt good to be working calmly on simple things in that bad memory place. It's a really nice place, too. There is a great, safe tying tree in front of a bench where I used to tie Mara and read a book.

On the way home she told me she's not really into riding, her focus is liberty and circus. I already know this from her website, but I said, "That's cuz you've never done a 50 mile endurance ride in the mountains, spending 9 hours on a good horse." (I also qualified that with in America.)

So it was an "expensive walk" but a little more than that. At one point as we stood there talking, Mag rested his forehead against her thigh, clearly saying,"You're nice." She said, "He really makes me like Arabians."

Good, cuz the more people who fall for Mag, the safer he is if something happens to me: )