Long Lining Rumer

Rumer is continuing to progress with her long lining. Today I put the traces on her for the first time, along with the surcingle and long lines. I left the breeching off- without the cart to attach all the pieces to, there are a lot of straps hanging off here and there, tied up where I can so they don't drag but it's a lot flapping so I'm trying to be careful not to overdo it at any one time. Her ears kept an eye on it for the first 15 feet or so, until I put my hand out to target in front of her and then her attention focused forward. I love having all these horses willing to follow my hand as a target and get mad at myself when I forget to take advantage of it. The babies are way more into it than the older horses...another symptom of the older horses thinking they shouldn't do anything unless "told to", as opposed to the babies who are thrilled to take initiative.

I still had the long lines attached only to her halter and today worked on getting a little further away from her. I started out by beginning to transfer her go forward cue with the rein to a sound cue. As I write this I can't believe how stupid I am. I just realized how much I probably confused her. I was trying to transfer her to a kiss sound for going forward. I watched a video of someone else using that and it's what I used for Ande as well. But this winter, I had heavily reinforced everyone for coming to me with that sound. It's great when someone gets loose, or is out far in a paddock, for me to do that and they react at least by looking at me and sometimes by coming running. So no wonder she kept spinning toward me when I did that to try to get her to move forward. And why did I not figure that out until I was writing this? I'll credit PMS.

I guess I'll just be glad I am writing this as a training log and have figured it out. We'll try again tomorrow and perhaps a "walk on" instead. Even so, she did allow me to get further from her once she was going forward from a rein cue...she just didn't get it when I tried to kiss her forward from a distance. Thank God horses are so forgiving!