Sandra Session One

I mentioned on Instagram that I was toying with the idea of videoing my time spent with Sandra, one of our broodmares, and sharing it with you.

Sandra (Dash N Sandrock Jay) is an American Quarter Horse, buckskin in color, coming 7 years old and… her education so far is lacking. We purchased her late last Summer and spent a few evenings in the round pen with her before life got busy and she was back burnered. It’s always our goal to help a horse be successful and in this case, we want her to be a productive member of society in as many ways as possible.

So it’s time to go to school.

I recorded all of my working time with her and I didn’t cut any of it (so you get to see a lot of my awkwardness but also a couple nice close-ups of my pretty blue Cinch shirt… ha!). But in the name of transparency, you’re “getting” to see it all. These early sessions need to be kept short so it’s easy to share them all with you.

Right now, Sandra has no reason to trust me and she’s had nearly 7 years to form a non-opinion of people. For this reason, and since no one is paying me to train this horse and I’m not under any time constraints for competitions or something, I am opting to keep these first few sessions short. It did take me 5 or 10 minutes to catch her and I did spend some time brushing her before I turned the video on.

The first thing you’ll see is me struggle getting my rope in order – you can laugh, it’s okay. At this point, I’m just wanting to control the direction her feet are moving in. You can see that Sandra is fearful and confused at first and it’s important I just keep my body language the same, letting her react how she feels the need to react as long as she goes in the direction I want her to go in. Those are my only rules in the beginning – I get to choose the direction and when to stop. She can go whatever pace she’s comfortable going.

I am also aiming to cue her as softly as possible, keeping my body language calm but not timid. When we get the hang of this, she’ll move the direction I point and the end of my lead rope won’t be necessary so I try to use that end as little as possible. Of course, for now, I have to increase my energy in the end of the lead rope until she responds appropriately.

I keep her on a fairly short lead as much as possible and I’d prefer her to walk if she’s comfortable but, again, she gets to choose the pace she’s comfortable at for now.

I disengage the hindquarters and have her face me as I say “woah”. Then I want her feet to stay still… no “joining up” or anything else.

When we move on to some desensitizing, I use my rope and nothing else. I establish a pattern or rhythm with my rope and for today at least, I aim to have my rope fall against her in the same spot each time. We’ll work up to that rope falling against her all over her body, but today having it fall over her shoulders was a win.

You’ll see on her left side she tries to leave after a few attempts, and that’s fine. I aim to just calmly go with her, changing my rhythm as little as possible.

And then I leave my blunder in there because… transparency. I made a half-hearted (and too early with too little preparation) attempt at having her disengage the hindquarters while I’m in her space and a few seconds in realized it wasn’t a very smart thing to do because I hadn’t set her up for success, hadn’t given her the knowledge and the tools to succeed. When she gives me half a try, I stop.

You’ll notice she’s very quick to learn to backup from the wiggle of the rope but slower to come toward me when I draw her back in. I believe this is simply because she would rather not be in my space. We’ll see if the backup sticks. 🙂

And at the end of the video I take her halter off. The pause in the video is just me standing there, letting her be a horse for a few minutes and then I turn the video back on to show my attempt at haltering her again. Sandra is not easy to catch so hopefully we’ll make progress with that as well.

Yes, her feet need trimmed. No, she’s not ready for that yet.

I have been hesitant to share many videos of me working with/riding my horses… please be kind. We’re all just doing the best we can!

Anyway, without further ado, the video: