I’m still new to taking private lessons with my own horse, so today was quite the experience. Clay Wright is a local trainer who I watched a few times at my last barn, and jumped at a last minute open spot this weekend. V, who is working with Flash for/with me, takes lessons from him too, and I was hoping for some ground work and strength building exercises.

Flash took 10 minutes to decide to load (to be fair, he’s only been trailered once since he moved to the new barn in March), hauled well except he got super sweaty. I love my new Trailer Eyes camera and that really helped my driving at least.

The biggest thing I learned from Clay is a few concrete, slow and quiet ways to get Flash to tune into me. He’s very distractable and not always with me, which means taking him new places always feels like a bit of a gamble. I know he’s a solid, well travelled and well trained horse, but sometimes he hops off the trailer in a new place with limited space in his brain for working with me. Today we practiced exercises based on moving Flash’s weight forward and back, keeping his shoulder off of me and tuning into whatever speed I’m going took a whole hour…but what an educational hour! It was quite the workout for us both, even though we just walked around in a few circles and stood a lot.

Flash isn’t too spooky or reactive, just spacy, but by the end of the hour he was much more tuned into me and not bracing for whole minutes against the pressure of me asking for simple things, like lifting his weight up and back or just ever so slightly forward. He was definitely still able to be distracted but asking something of him constantly means he can’t fully tune me out, which was Clay’s point. The more I ask of him and keep his attention, the more he’ll realize it’s easier to stay with me and in turn be more confident with me.

There’s more buzzing around my head but this pregnant lady is tired and in desperate need of a shower! All photos on the post courtesy of the amazing V!