Kizzy and targeting cones

Today I will introduce you to Kizzy. Kizzy holds a special place in my heart; perhaps it is because she is the littlest, perhaps because she was the pony who started me off giving Jr Pony Club lessons here or perhaps because she was a rescue who was a challenge to even catch when I first got her. The littlest lesson kids love her (and so do their moms!). She is not at all a laid back pony- and kids who learn to post on Kizzy have really accomplished something as her trot steps are rapid-fire! Kizzy is also Rumer's mom :) She is about 12 hands and in her early teens. I have had her about 3 years.

I began using her as a lesson pony the first year I had her even though I knew very little about her background. My daughter, who is a perfect pony rider because even as an adult, she fits on ponies just fine, had ridden her and she was a little wiggly but didn't object to being ridden. I was only planning on using her for one beginner on a longe line anyway... little did I know how that would grow!

I knew she had been treated harshly and she was very head shy; and very quick to jump and react around people. Initially, I just gave her time to get used to us and tried to reward her with treats and pleasant experiences whenever people approached.

Fast forward to today. I have used her in lessons with many children and she has come along nicely. It is great to introduce new kids to her because they can easily see how they need to move slowly around her so she doesn't get worried. Because of her size being perfect for very young children, I am trying to find ways to make her job enjoyable and be a good mount for small children as they become more independent and go off lead. My current project with her is teaching her to go to a cone even if it means going away from me. Now that she feels safe with me, she'd rather stick close to me when kids are on her than go off around the arena. As long as the kids use proper rein aids, she does go along, but sometimes it requires stronger aids than I'd like and I'd rather she was happy with her job of going where a child "suggests". I'm hoping to use targeting cones to teach her to go around the arena, to go over a line of ground poles or a small jump and go straight to the end, etc. without needing a lot of direction from her tiny riders.

Now Alex Kurland has filled my head with fantasies of teaching a pony to identify colors and be able to direct them around a whole course from a distance. I'm sure she is very capable of doing that but right now, I need to start at the beginning! So after teaching her to target cones, it took some time to teach her that she could walk away from me to go to a cone. As soon as I tried to stop and just have her go a step beyond me, she would stop dead. Good pony! I can't fault her for that!

So I needed a cue to tell her it was OK to keep going beyond me. Today was the first day we really achieved that. What I do is slide down the leadrope as we arrive at the cone and invite her to continue going forward by extending my hand out in front of her nose in a gently sweeping motion. At first I hung back just a hair as we approached the cone and made sure not to put any pressure on the leadrope that she would interpret as a request to stop. I do want this pony to halt at the slightest request from a small person. I felt it was a huge success when she took this tiny initiative to go beyond me. Even though she is VERY food motivated, she is more concerned about getting in trouble. I repeated that several times to make sure she was confident in stepping ahead of me and to try to be sure that both she and I were clear on the cue: I need to be very consistent with the cue I am giving her and I wanted several repetitions so I was sure she really understood it. Then I began to ask for a little more- a full step ahead of me, then a step-and-a-half, etc but with many repetitions at each new distance. I had put out two cones about 6 feet apart. At first I had her target one cone, then just led her to the next one to target, then led her beyond the cone and turned and came back to both cones again. When we had built up to her going the length of the (short) leadrope from me, I moved the cones further apart and laid the leadrope over her neck so I could let go of her and have her go further from me. At the end of our session for today, the cones were about 15 feet apart and I could send her from one to the other! She isn't enthusiastic about it and so I want to work on this more so she will do it without hesitation and worry. But I hope we are on our way!

You can see a couple photos of Kizzy on my website: www.bookendsfarm.com

Rumer goes for a walk

Today I spent some time with Rumer. Rumer will be two years old on April 23 of this year. She is a medium pony with paint markings. As the only filly of the three foals who have been born here, she is interesting in her differences: not sure how much is personality and how much is filly, but she's more about heels than teeth! She has gotten much much better with clicker training- more interested in interacting (almost to a fault- right at the gate when I try to go in!) and hopeful that there will be fun games to play.

I would like to teach her to drive this summer as I think she will be very cute in harness and it will give her a job and me a reason to be consistent with her training. I told my farrier I was looking for a good used cart to start her on and within a week, I got an email....farriers are great grapevines. So today I went and looked at it and it looks in very good shape but I need to be sure it is the right size as the pony who it was used with was only 10 h.

So when I got home, I took her out so I could get some measurements- not only height but length for shafts. This time I got her at 12.2 when I thought I had taped her at 13 h previously- it's tough when I don't have a good level spot to measure them. It was a sunny and warm day but with a cool stiff breeze so the tape was fluttering around her as I used it. A perfect experience for her and she did quite well.

Then we took a walk down the driveway, which meant passing flapping metal roofing, a truck, trailer and woodsplitter in new place, a huge new pile of round bales, etc. She was quite fine with all of that but was concerned about the footing. We encountered water running right over the top of the ground from the melting snow, mud where the snow was gone, slush, and ice! It was interesting to see her hesitate at each change of footing. She would stop and look down at it and want to get behind me rather than next to me. I did a lot of positioning her next to me, trying to be aware of what training tools I was using so I didn't get caught in a shoving match with her. She can be quite pushy with the others in her paddock and tries to do that with me as well: using her shoulders to push others around.

I think it went like this: I would let her stop and look, but when she picked up her head, she would try to push behind me. I slid down the rein and tried to reposition her, but then she'd get pushier so I'd use the Tai Chi wall to stop her. Then the hard part for me was to release when she softened a bit, rather than continuing to push back. We would do this a couple times until she set foot on the changed footing, at which point I'd click and treat; and let her drop her head to investigate again. Then she was fine until we came to another change and we'd do it all over again. If repetition builds progress, then I hope we made some good progress today! She only had one little scoot on the way back to the barn when the truck started up behind her. I think it was a good excuse to blow off a little steam. I had to give her credit for paying close attention to me when her buddies were calling her from the paddock- she never called back or seemed to miss them.