Gwenyth Rides in a Group, Over Obstacles, and in the XC Field

Gwenyth the clydesdale continues to make good progress in her riding training.  Most recently we have been learning about riding with other horses, going over ground poles, and riding out in the back forty. 

Her first ride with another horse was with Beauty, a level headed quarter horse who rides like a sports car.  The second ride in the arena with other horses we had four total.  Beauty again, Dewey the OTTB, and Rain the paint.  Sweet Gwenyth is so thoughtful, if she's confused about what is going on her default is to stop and watch, then once she's done thinking about it we continue on.  Because everyone was working on different things and riding in different directions, we had a few moments where she had to deal with arena traffic. 

Gwenyth is just starting to get the hang of leg yielding.  While trotting along and as we approached another horse with shorter legs who was going slower, I pressed with my outside leg to get her to move over a little.  We would trot past the other horse, then we leg yield back to the rail.  The first time she was a little worried about going by another horse, because Gwenyth is pretty low in the herd hierarchy.  In fact, she's low enough that I needed to put her back in her own paddock so she would have more access to the big round hay bale.  Garmin, my small blind pony, had been ordering her around and not letting her have a turn at the ponies' bale! 

Even though Gwenyth was nervous about passing another horse who was higher than her on the totem pole, she was able to think her way through the task and accomplish it anyway.  Another tricky thing has been when other horses are trotting at her head-on.  Generally in this situation horse and rider pairs will pass with left shoulders nearest each other, like driving a car.  If there is additional maneuvering going on, someone will verbally call "inside" or "outside" to indicate whether they are going to go towards the inside of the arena or the outside of it.  The first couple times this happened, Gwenyth came to an abrupt halt and STARED at the horse approaching her.  When she realized that the other horse was going to calmly go by her, she decided she could continue after all. 

Another arena traffic challenge was watching the other horses begin jumping.  The first time Rain went over the cross rails Gwenyth slammed on the brakes and absolutely GAWKED at Rain, like she was sure this couldn't be possible.  Rain has plenty of experience doing this and so she just continued along, hopping over other cross rails in the arena while Gwenyth stared.  Eventually Gwenth sort of declared, "Well, ok, they do all kinds of weird things here!  I guess this is just one more strange behavior to add to the list."

Once Gwenyth had seen Rain going over the poles I then asked Gwenyth to do it.  I started with a jump that had a ground pole between the standards, so Gwenyth could start with something very simple.  She walked right up to it and then stopped, casually tossing me a look over her shoulder asking what exactly we were supposed to do now?  I told her to walk on, and she took tiny little shuffly steps until her toes were right up against the pole.  Then she put her nose all the way down to ground to examine this obstacle.  She had already experienced going over the bridge in the arena, but of course this pole looked different to her than a bridge.

Gwenyth proceeded to sniff at the pole, then touch it with her lips.  Starting in the center of the pole she investigated it all the way to the left and then all the way to the right.  Once she had confirmed its benign character she carefully took a first step over it, paused, then walked all the way over.  I praised her and told her how smart she was.  Because she was allowed to slowly process the idea on her own terms, I ended up with a brave mare who was then able to boldly walk and trot over the pole from both directions with no hesitation. 

Gwenyth with her mane braided and thinking deep thoughts

The last challenge from last week was riding out all the way to the back of the property.  We did this with Alice on Beauty, to help give Gwenyth a little courage by doing it in a small herd.  Normally the dogs would take on this role, but Gwenyth is still getting used to riding with my dogs.  Once horses are accustomed to the dogs they like to go out with them, because the dogs protect the horses and flush out any horse monsters.  Gwenyth isn't quite there yet, she still asks me why Mahzi, clearly a predator, is following so closely behind her looking so relaxed.  But when Beauty didn't seem to care about the dogs Gwenyth decided they were ok.  We started out by walking along the fenceline at the bottom of  the hill where the horses can't see the cross country jumps.  This way the jumps appear as the horse is headed towards home.  The horse is more likely to go by them if home is in sight, rather than thinking they are horse monsters lurking on the horizon as the horse is leaving the safety of home.

The first cluster of logs were lying ominously still, all in a row, in the same way a group of coyotes would on the hunt.  Gwenyth thought this was a dangerous scenario, and got a little worried.  Fortunately her "big spook" so far has been to stop and stare, then jog in place a little if she's truly concerned.  The way we work through things like this is to use Beauty, her buddy horse for the ride.  We all turned and headed towards the scary logs, but Alice kept Beauty between Gwenyth and the logs.  This works for Gwenyth psychologically for three reasons.  First, Beauty sets the example by showing Gwenyth that she isn't concerned (Beauty has jumped everything out in the field).  Second, if the monsters do pounce, Beauty will be the target not Gwenyth (and we all know you don't have to be the fastest horse, you just have to be faster than the slowest horse!).  Third, if Gwenyth did panic and run away from the logs, she would be running away from Beauty, and it's safer to stay with your herd.

All these factors worked in our favor and by the end of the ride Gwenyth was marching around the logs like an old pro.  Occasionally she gave them a second hard look, but really she was very brave.  I'm pleased with her progress, and I attribute a lot of her learning accomplishments to her age.  Gwenyth is eleven, which generally is late to start a horse under saddle.  However, personally I prefer starting adult horses to youngsters.  I find that they have the psychological maturity and the mental capacity to think their way through things, versus a typical three year old who has the attention span of a flea.  Adults are less reactive, more calculating, and when they understand I'm a reasonable human they generally are willing and able to do what I ask much with much less repetition than a youngster needs.  I really am enjoying Gwenyth!