Beasil Does Chores
Beasil has been on “the DL” for the last month. The short version is that she was spayed on January 6th and has been healing (and not doing much heeling) since. She came through it all just fine, though she lost a bit of her endurance from lounging around. Brücke was happy to jump into Beasil’s place on Monday’s herding lessons, but Beasil was ready to jump back in yesterday!
I was prepared for a taste of the ‘unridden horse’ scene yesterday. Beasil’s typical enthusiasm has been compared to a Freight Train and my job has been to keep her on the tracks. With no herding for about 5 weeks, I figured that she might want to make up for it with an out-of-control session.
I was wrong!
Our lesson went quite well. We did the HT routine, with stops, and then worked on circling while getting her to work farther off the stock. It’s coming along, with a couple wrinkles to work out before she’s ready to begin working on the PT.
At the end of the lesson I was ready to leave the arena and Cathy (our instructor) said that Beasil should do her first chores.
What?
Cathy wanted Beasil to help me put the sheep away. This involved moving the woolies through a gate from the main arena, into a large pen, and from there through another gate -- and then another gate into a smaller pen.
Yikes!
I was concerned about what might happen when Beasil was in close quarters with the sheep. Cathy told me to open the gates, reminded me to use her ‘stops’, and just do it.
As Cathy reminds me once in a while, keep a positive picture in my mind of what I want her to do -- she can read my mind!
I removed her lead and left her in the middle of the arena. The rest is clear on the video. Despite my couple of miscues, Beasil did just great!
Back in the saddle again. Go Beasil!
A New Skill
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
