Jury's First Training Session

I now have Jury, or MG Hollywood Jury, here for training to be sold.  He's a three year old registered AQHA gelding in a gorgeous grulla color.  Today was his first training session now that he's been here a little while and has seen the other horses go to the arena to work.

I haltered him and led him out of his paddock, then to the arena.  We're still getting to know each other and I was a little short on time this morning, so we didn't do the entire grooming routine before we headed down.  Once in the arena I had him follow me around on the lead rope while I picked up manure from the previous day's riding lessons and tossed it out of the arena with the pitchfork.  The dogs wandered around with us too, occasionally pausing to wrestle and play.

Then I began leading Jury over ground poles, and over the bridge.  Some of the ground poles were set up between jump standards that had tipping decorative trees, and after some brief side-eye Jury walked between and over everything.

Rizzo the dog was kind enough to demonstrate proper bridge technique when Jury got stuck with just his front feet on it.  He sure gave her an odd look , but then did exactly as she had done.

The other toy I introduced today was the hula hoops.  They're fairly large, sparkly, and make a rattling sound when you move them.  I tossed them on the ground to start with, and led Jury in circles around them until he was bored with it.  He began walking over them on his own, carefully placing his hooves inside the circles and then walking out.  Jury gave these odd things the side-eye as well.  You can tell what he's super focused on by where the opening of his ears are pointing.  In this case, straight down at the weird human paraphernalia.

Jury walked over them several times each direction, and then got a little lazy.  He placed a hoof directly on one of the hula hoops, instead of inside it.  The hoop just sunk in the sand, which gave him pause, but wasn't overly alarming.  However, when he shifted his weight the hoop then MOVED beneath his foot.  I snapped this photo just before he showed me what kind of an athlete he really is!

When he realized the hoop had lifted up off the ground and attempted to take a bite out of his chest, he launched into the air.  No exaggeration - I suspect his feet were at the height of my shoulders at the peak of his acrobatic maneuver.  I suspected this might happen, so fortunately I was prepared with a long lead rope, wearing a helmet and gloves, and I was able to quickly redirect his attention back to me.  You can tell this horse was bred to think (as opposed to my retired racehorses who were bred to run) because Lucky's response to something new or scary is to stop and think about it.  A racehorse suffering from similar startling circumstances likely would have bolted.

Once Jury had settled a bit and had begun following me around again, we continued to walk in circles around the hoops.  Pascal decided the situation merited some border collie assistance.  While Jury  and I stood by watching, Pascal my 10 week old puppy hopped into the middle of a hoop.  From this location he then picked up the giant hoop in his tiny mouth, and began trotting away from us carrying the rattling hoop in his mouth with most of it dragging behind him!  He was aiming to take it back to the barn to save for later, but when he got to the narrow, human-sized exit of the arena, he attempted to prance through with his prize and got stuck.  The hoop was much too wide to fit through the small space!  He bumped his hoop in the doorway a couple more times before giving it up and going to find a stick to carry around instead.  Jury just stared at Pascal, then occasionally looked at me as if to say, "this is the strangest place I've ever been."

Jury has no idea what's in store for him next!