Ground Driving Dewey

Dewey has been coming along so well with his liberty work, and I'm a little stronger as I come back from the back surgery, so we started some work with long lines and ground driving.  We started out in the round pen on the lunge line.  Dewey is getting the hang of voice commands, and can comfortably pick up either lead at the canter on a 20m circle.  I had him tacked up in the surcingle and a bridle with a simple egg butt snaffle bit, and the long lines were wrapped up and tied securely to the surcingle to bounce around at his sides.  He does need to frolic a little at the beginning, but once he's jumped around a couple times he settles right to work.  Whenever he does it, he reminds me that he's only a baby, just turned four, and that really he's mentally very quiet and mature for his age.  It also explains why he never made it to his first race, he's so mellow after just a minute or two of shenanigans.

One he was warmed up and ready to focus I arranged his long lines so that I could ground drive him.  Dewey hasn't done this before, but he stood very patiently as I arranged my equipment and then got myself into position.  With just a simple voice command to walk he marched right out.  We did some practice turns, starts, and stops, and when he had the hang of that we started walking over the poles and the little jump.  I was pleasantly surprised when he started to really lift his back at the walk and look for contact with the bit.  All the transitions we did at liberty are paying off with his ground driving, because he knows all the voice commands and also how to balance and use his body.  He figured everything out so quickly that I did some more complicated things with him than I normally would in a first ground driving session!

We did figure eights around the jump standards, walked to the mounting block and halted in position for mounting.  He even walked into the chute made of two ground poles, halted, and backed out again absolutely straight.  The box made of ground poles was no problem for him to do a simple 360 degree pivot inside and then walk out again.  I did get a little video of him, but I was trying to handle the reins, give him his voice cues, and video all at the same time, so steering was not as spot-on as I would have liked.  It is hard to be my own paparazzi!

The video can be seen here:
https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=10205937789381314&pnref=story

The following day my working student was able to get a video of me and Dewey ground driving over obstacles which can be seen here:
https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=10205953161605610&pnref=story