I just spent a couple of hours at the indoor arena with the horses. Flyboy got an hour's worth of practice standing tied to the rail. He was perfectly relaxed and probably bored. Unfortunately no other horses were there. Again. Both my horses need the excitement of seeing other activities in progress! I love having the place to myself, but I do understand the value of working in a crowd! Ropers or barrel racers have the arena booked this evening, so if I can drag myself back out in the cold, maybe I'll take Fly down again. Or maybe we'll see if anyone is there tomorrow.....
I then spent some time in the round pen with Flyboy. And we practiced "following the feel," leading from a "feel" (I got tons of exercise jogging and turning all over the place!), and yielding in all directions. I am also working hard on getting him to lower his head when asked. He will drop his head a little (I am very quick on the release) but if he feels trapped at all he will jerk his head up again. I think working on getting him to give to pressure might help with the pulling back issues we have had. It's not like it's been a huge problem, but I have seen him do it a couple of times, so I don't trust him not to pull back. Flyboy has to tie reliably and safely if he wants to be a good endurance horse.
In any case, I feel like he is making good progress. He's an interesting horse, and while there are a few holes in his education, we are working on filling them. I am encouraged, and I still think he's going to Fly down the trail eventually!
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