"What were we thinking?!!!!" That’s the question my husband, Bill, and I asked ourselves when we brought home Zelador and Zeloso, two weanling Lusitano colts, at the end of December in 2004. Our combined ages exceed 112 years and our other two horses were eight-years-old and seven when we bought them. We had never worked with youngsters, didn’t know how to work with youngsters and there we were...
To say that we are having the time of our lives would be an understatement. The two Z's led us to liberty training, Working Equitation, tricks (including the bow, the smile, mounting pedestals, pushing large balls) and with any luck, carriage driving. They will begin their jumping education this month and for the past two years have explored classical horsemanship (work in-hand, long reining and work under saddle).
Their adventures and misadventures are chronicled in this blog. I hope you enjoy watching how quickly these two are training us!
Breakthrough Treats
At one point I was thinking that I should make a chart for the arena listing all the things to work on with each horse then place the date on the chart when I practice them because there are so
Bells/Click/Treat
As usual, Kye was cute, really cute. He went to the piano, touched a black key and “Mary Had a Little Lamb” rang out from the piano. Kye walked over to me (stepping in time to the music) so I
Treats for Bells
At the end of January I started working with Kye doing tricks and liberty. Yesterday he went to the jingle bells and rang them…repeatedly! He loved them. He didn’t want to leave them. The noise he made with the bells
Demo mode
Just had tons of fun with Pax, Kye, Zelador and Zeloso. Pax and Zeloso got to try picking up the toys (cleaning up after playing!). First Pax did it. When we brought Zeloso into the arena the toys were still
Raised Floor Piano
The floor piano. As you can see we needed to raise the piano to keep the sharp hooves off of it. The boys quite like the sounds that come out of this thing.
Yellow Jacket Attack
Yesterday I opened the gate of the very small paddock (sort of a round pen) attached to the lower barn to bring in Zelador and Zeloso so we could take them up to the arena to ride, play the piano
Floor Piano
We placed a protective cover on one of the floor pianos (which is now attached to a firm backing, a ¾ inch plywood board) and put the floor piano at nose height in the arena. It’s sitting on two stacks
Ostermaier and Bell Exercises
Lately we’ve been working on Albert Ostermaier’s method for teaching the piaffe which is done in a stall. Along with this I’ve spent a few minutes doing the first three steps of Frank Bell’s Seven Step Safety System in the
That Was Easy!
The other evening we had a group ride in the arena. Five people on their horses. We’re doing this so that at some future date we can create a quadrille. After the ride I asked an observer, Barbara McKnight (Ciara’s