Gully, the new horse is the first one we did this morning.  His owner was here from Bandera to see how he was getting along.  The first thing we did this morning was to review his ground skills.  He is starting to get all of them.  However, when you try to circle Gully, he tosses his head, jumps in the air and paws at you while coming towards you.  He is pretty much of a teenager.  He also has some stallion behaviour.   When we worked on finding the cone with his feet,  his mind became a lot more engaged and he quit being so much of a teenager and settles down.  This is all part of his left brained extrovert personality.  He has to be challenged all the time. 

George was the next horse we worked.  We spent only about ten minutes working on the ground skills.  He does very well at all those skills.  Then he was ridden and this is only the third time he has been ridden here.  We worked on circles to soften his face and get him over the fear of being pulled on.  He will sidepass, and will two-track.  He must have had some training on him to do such intricate  manuevers.  Tomorrow,  we will ride in the arena. 

Prince was next and we rode him for the first time, here.  We discovered he is just like a colt, with no basic foundation on him at all.  He doesn't turn, he doesn't go with the feel, and he braces at everything.  He travels downhill, pushing all his weight onto the front legs, so therefore can't get his front feet out of the way to go forward.  Consequently, he slows to a stop a lot and has no forward momentum.  Today we worked on stopping him and giving to the bit.  Prince braces to everything and this has become an automatic reaction by now, to protect himself.  We worked on circles and leading off with the correct foot on the turn.  The horse must lead off with the correct foot so that he has momentum for his body to leave. 

Cinco was the last one.  He is still fairly scared, but is getting better with trusting us.  We only did on line work with him today.  We did a lot of getting him to drop his head and relax.  Because he is a right brained introvert, it is a slow process to get him to trust us.  We have to teach him two or three things and then quit.  Today we worked on giving to steady pressure, circling, and back up.  He got the steady pressure quickly.  Circling to the left, he was fairly well connected to us, but circling to the right he would leave pretty fast.  He would have his head turned away with his ribs poked right at you.  Backing was also pretty easy for him today. 

Tomorrow we will try for some pictures.  Stay tuned!