yesterday afternoon .....
lunging - no she won't go right rein again
in hand? what's that, she says. So i need to be shown how to do that, i think - reading books can only take you so far. for instance, richard hinrichs says - look where you're going. but if you look where you're going, you're not looking at the horse, so i'm confused. unless e.g. you look where you're going but slightly over the horses shoulder? ?
and the arena is a bit deep for walking on foot - i managed to forget to put my long boots on so ended up with a boot full of arena material, never comfortable that!
But i would have had her walking along the lane, save that there was a very old lady walking the other way (owner's mother ...) and if molly decided she wanted to argue about it, knocking over old ladies is not a good plan!
it was a nice afternoon but no one else out, being thursday ...
and must get her clipped. at least with being off can organise that with gaynor for a weekday afternoon.
and yet again the man didn't turn up to mend our boiler and the roofer didn't turn up to mend the roof. dammit.
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For the lunging, you need to think of a triangle. The line at the horse's head and your whip at the horse's bum being one side of the triangle and you the pointed top.
If you put Molly on a very small circle close to you, you can keep her in between the line an the whip. Turn her head a bit towards you, and tap forward with the whip to cue her forward. Your front hand always keeps her head a bit towards you and you need to move to always keep the whip behind her no matter what. Keep her on that small circle until she is obedient to your aids and then, very gradually make the circle bigger. Lots of patience and repetition.
In hand is hard because you have to be able to match your strides to the horse's pace. I can't move that fast any more, so I opt for the long lines.
Still, with two lines and a surcingle to run the lines through, you can walk just to the inside with the horse along the wall. Again, the whip is to cue as an extension of you and a driving aid. Use the outside rein to keep her to the wall and the inside rein to bend, just as you would when riding. Your body and the whip take the place of your legs.
I use the long lines to lunge as well. I can control the size of the circle and the horse's outline as he circles around me.
All of this does take a lot of practice and when you start out, it can be confusing for both you and the horse. Were I there, I'd be glad to help, but it's a long walk across a cold ocean. *S*
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