Horseback Riding Fun

My friend and I went riding for two and a half hours last Sunday and we had so much fun!! We went to a friend's house to ride out in their cow pasture because they have tons of land with lots of different, fun terrain. The cute little donkey jack above followed us everywhere!


He was so cute, although a bit of a brat. He kept walking up behind the horses, sniffing/braying loudly and biting their haunches. We had to keep swinging our arms at him to get him away from us. Eventually they all got used to each other. :)

He eventually went back to his herd and we continued our ride.

The creek was almost totally dry. You can sort of see how high the banks are in this picture and the water is normally that high. It's been a dry summer. Check out the cool tree roots!

We stopped at one of the tiny little water puddles for a drink.

A view looking off a hill at their land. Very nice barn and house. Wish I could live there. :)

The barn has a full apartment in the top with plumbing and electric!!

Their awesome house!

I was riding my friend's horse Tony.

I like this picture. Considering I'm in a Western saddle, haven't had dressage lessons in six years and have only ridden five or six times in the last four years I think my position is pretty good. I just need to turn my toe more forward to put my inner thigh in against the saddles so I can reach down through my leg and heels, plus I need to support my core more to raise my ribcage and straighten my shoulders. :) This was also about one and a half hours into the ride too so I was a little tired. Please don't gripe at me about the lack of a helmet and heels. I didn't have any of my gear with me and I couldn't pass up the opportunity to ride. Sorry!

The exciting news is that this Saturday my friend and I are going to our first competitive trail ride!! We're just going for fun, not competing, because her horses aren't trained in it and this is our first time. We're just going to see what it's like, what we need to work on and to have fun. Competitive Trail Riding is what I hope to someday do with Chrome. We're so excited!

P.S. I'm not talking about arena trail classes. This is a competitive trail ride, such as with ACTHA (although I'm not sure which one this one is affiliated with).

Training Roadblock . . .

*The pictures are from the walk and have no relevance to the text. :)

Okay, so I wrote out this really long unhappy, depressed rant because of a crappy training session I had with Chrome. Well only the last five minutes sucked because I got frustrated and let my emotions take over.

Here's the gist of it. I was grooming Chrome and just for the heck of it (because we haven't worked on it in ages) I asked Chrome to lower his head. He didn't, so I figured I just needed to review it because he forgot. He also was very reluctant to pick up his front hooves (which we also haven't worked on in a while). So when I finished grooming I decided to get my clicker and review the things he seemed to have trouble with . . .

I grabbed my treat pouch and he saw it . . . when I asked him to lower his head he did it perfectly!! This is after completely refusing to do it when I asked without treats. He also did his hooves perfectly. In fact he did it before I even touched him. So that means he didn't "forget" those behaviors, he just didn't want to do it without his "paycheck".

Sniffing neighbors' horse's poop on the road lol.

So either horses are truly selfish creatures who won't do anything without a reward or punishment (if you're into that) or I've failed somewhere in my training. At first when I was emotionally involved I thought the first (which could still be part of it), but now I'm thinking it has to do with my training. With clicker training you're supposed to fade out the clicker/treat, by following a variable reinforcement schedule, where you sometimes click and sometimes don't. Eventually you completely wean them off of a click and food reward. You still tell them they're good and give them scratches and rubs. The thing is I've never done that. Once I've taught the behavior I move on . . . I still click/treat every time I ask for certain behaviors. Now I have to figure out why he will lead and pick up his rear hooves perfectly without a reward, but things like his front hooves and head lowering he won't. I'm so confused.

Investigating the sign.

On a happier note he did fantastic with our ground tying work (using the clicker obviously) and was pretty good on our walk considering we haven't been in a while. Here's a video of the ground tying.


So I guess I need to be more thorough in my training. Anyone have any tips? Videos? Blogs?

Checking out another sign.

Chrome's First Time Jumping! Video!

Chrome's first time ever jumping. He did so great. He's so brave he barely hesitated at all. :D



Isn't he so cute?!