Kristen Vanderpool Equine

True to my word, today we worked on “other” stuff. Walk beside me –he’s pretty good at this one. He was trying to watch carefully what I was doing and didn’t lag behind if I started to go faster. His stop is the worst, but I think I might be stopping to fast with no warning. I tried to make it more obvious. Turns are ok, but he doesn’t relish me walking into his face, so I reinforced for good responses on those exercises. His backup is also ok, but very slow. I would li

Aslan has been regressing in certain behaviors and demonstrating that he isn't having fun via evasions during mount up. This has bothered me, because normally he loves training and you almost have to drag him from the arena. (I had to train him not to do that!). I think I put more consideration into how he feels both emotionally and physically than most trainers. It has made training him very challenging, and I can't always just concede to what he wants or he would be eat

To start the lesson, I changed things up a bit so he wouldn't be so bored or resistant, and hopefully I wouldn't have to use the escalation protocol I came up with. I really don't want to sour his attitude toward work, and I think part of this resistance could come from a few things, such as being in the arena all winter, our lessons can be over an hour, having a bit of a repetitive routine and also, I haven't varied his treats as much as I could. Circle Game: we warmed up wi

Aslan and I have had our first two outside rides. I didn't really have expectations except, "Let's see how this goes." I kept him in the yard, on the grass. Nothing new happened except a few spooks, which he did in place (yay!). It still feels weird to have him "drop" unexpectedly from underneath me. But at least, this time, I have a saddle and shorter reins (duh!). I also tried to freak him out by taking him near the miniature donkeys (who were intimidated by us and g

We had an opportunity to work on square corners. They are looking much better, at the walk anyway. The trot still needs more work, when it comes to listening to my cues, especially trying to do this with 4 other people in the arena. (I spend all my time looking where I'm going or asking Aslan to move forward if someone passes us (he likes to stop). I just need a big ass field.) The good news is that when we are doing a circle and meet someone at X doing a circle in the o

Yay the time change means more daylight when I go to the barn late! I am so tired of trying to avoid ice and mud in the dark! A flashlight only helps so much. Our dressage lesson was today. We did "square corners" and I had to introduce a new cue. She doesn't like my western cues lol Fine, it's no problem for him to learn cues under different circumstances. So outside rein and outside leg mean turn. (No inside rein, which I knew, but it's such a fun and easy crutch).

After the issue the other day I tried to be a bit more flexible this time. Instead of boring Aslan with a bunch of transition circles this time, I let him do the more intricate work. I think I will keep flipping it like this so he doesn't anticipate dull lessons. One time we can do transitions and speed and direction, with minor lateral work. The next time can be about lateral work, pole work and refinement. This is just my thinking, because I really don't want him to di

Sometimes my personality betrays me. I'm the type where if I come up with a plan, I stick to it. I'm an accountant. I have a linear and logical brain. Unfortunately, this spills over into my horsemanship. But as you will see, it backfired and I wish I could apologize to Aslan! I didn't do anything mean, I was just unfair. The lesson didn't turn out the way I wanted and I got irritated with him. Sorry bud. I will make it up to you later. It started with him being in a

We had a day and a half where no one showed up, so I had to do more groundwork. I taught him some shoulder in. As predicted, I can ask from his left side and get a pretty good shoulder in on three tracks. Ask on his right however and he wants to walk away from the wall (and cut me off) instead of bending and crossing legs. I got a bit frustrated for a number of reasons but then realized something. Yes he is bad on that side, but also we haven't worked on it in a while.