Barn Pixie

I've been humming that line in my head for two days and only now realized it isn't right. The Who - Magic Bus; "hope I die before I get old" but really I don't, I'd prefer to live to be very old and active and then die fast and relatively painless. I do however hope the rings dries out before it gets cold or there will be ice bumps in it and I won't be able to ride til it thaws again.

I got completely sidetracked onto clicker training research because I want to make teach little Ruby some tricks. So I have ordered some books from Karen Pryor (whose book Lads Before the Wind I read looong long ago when it first came out and also read her father's book written when he was visiting her: Philip Wylie's The Spy Who Spoke Porpoise) that were written by Alexandra Kurland. I mentioned it to Leonor and she left me a copy of the book and a clicker to play with today, until my stuff comes in.

So I rode Kaboose and she seemed tight and cold for most of it. We did best when I stopped trying to practice sitting the trot and focused on getting her forward but not fast. I have decided to adopt Hannah's criteria for any particular ride; is the horse better at the end than she was at the beginning? If yes, then it has to be a net win. So we trotted a lot, and worked on longer and stretchier and bendier while trotting.

I rode Ruby for about 15 minutes bareback, trying to just whisper the things I wanted to do. I was struck by something Casa Corona said about her young horse, that was echoed in the comments. She said if she tried to Ride him for a circle or a serpentine, he couldn't seem to hear it, but if she just thought about it, and laid out the track in her mind very clearly, it worked very well. She says he is sensitive, and he over reacts to light aids. Two commenters agreed that their young horses had had similar issues, although one noted that as her horse aged he got more used to the aids and understood better the degrees of delicacy for more advanced school figures. It seems counterintuitive to use less aids for a young horse. It seems like they'd need big simple (and maybe loud) aids to begin with and then they should get refined. But I tried using much quieter aids with Ruby instead of noisier ones, and it seems to be helping a good deal. So I'll go with what works, and philosophize at leisure.

I concluded with 5 minutes of clicker training for everyone. Kaboose seemed to get it instantly, although she may have been just curious about the vetwrapped soda bottle on a stick. Penny dimly remembered something like this in her past, back when she was little (she reminds me of a 14 or 15 year old kid - very much working on adulthood). Ruby wanted to do her best trick ("Bow") and get more carrot parts for it. The soda bottle was just between her and the carrot giver.

this should be fun