Moving Forward

We have moved on. We are now very pleased with the fillie's abilities to lead, and are now moving on to loneging. We will keep on refining their leading as much as the opportunity arises, but it won't be the main thing we focus on. We have taught them a little bit on loneging, but it needs some work. They know walking and a little bit of trotting. They know that when you yield their hindquarters they face you and stop, and they know that when we tap on their neck they step away. Our goal is to get them to stop with different commands. The first is to stop with "woah". We want them to stop on the outside of the circle without turning in. The yeilding of their hindquarters, and resting the whip on my shoulder. Another goal is to get them to trot really well, and canter. All with voice commands. I want them to be able to transiton between the gaits too. With cantering we'll only get them to go into the canter first. Then they can drop back down into a trot. When they are consistently cantering on command we will have them canter without breaking gait. We'll spend a really short time on cantering, because they are young and still growing and I don't want to put too much stress on their legs. Better safe than sorry.
I started loneging on Tuesday. While I was there MD, the person who lives were the fillies are, went and rode Josie. I loneged Coffie and Toffy, and I also desensitized them both to the saddle blanket. I had already did it with Coffie, but I reviewed it anyway. Then MD came back from her ride and I asked her if she wanted to help me with the other two fillies. She's like "sure!" Before she had told me that she thought it was really cool too watch us train the fillies and was willing to learn how. So, the whole point was to teach her a little something. I handed her the halter and lead rope and told her she could catch one of the fillies. She went up to Frosty and petted her nose. I told her she could just throw the rope over Frosty's neck to catch her. She threw it over and the end of the rope hit Coffie on the other side of Frosty. So they kinda go spooked and ran off. That's all right we just got ta go after them. We followed Frosty around and she eventually stopped and let MD come up to her. I told her that this time try just placing it around her neck instead of throwing it. It worked and she got the halter on Frosty. When MD was going after Frosty she told me that I would have probably got the halter on already. That might be true, but I think the reason they spooked when she threw the rope over Frosty's neck is because they didn't know if she was going to hurt them or not. They didn't know her. They didn't know what to expect from her so, they acted accordingly.
Then came the loneging. First I showed and talked to MD about how to longe. Then I had her do it. It was apparent to me that she had never loneged a horse before, but that's okay. It's never too late to learn. At first she couldn't get Frosty to step out real well. And I can totally see how that can be a problem. Her first set of cues is to point and kiss. next is to pull on the lead rope, then a tap on the but. Well in order for you to do all these you have to be far enough to the front of the horse and have a short enough length of rope to be able to put pressure on the halter without being in front of them. And you have to be back far enough that you can reach their back end with the whip. It would probably help if I had a longer whip, but I don't so ya work with what ya got. MD eventually got that figured out but whenever she tapped Frosty on the but she would fling her hindquarters out. I suggested that instead of tapping her on the side of Frosty's butt, try tapping on the top. That worked much better. The next problem was that Frosty kept running into MD's space. After figuring out that it is way to complicated to keep the horse moving forward and stay out of your space, I told MD that we would just work on Frosty turning her shoulder away from her. So I showed her the sequence of pressure -  tap the air four times, lightly tap her neck 4x, tap harder4x, tap with increasing pressure every four beats until she does it - And nobody likes to hit their horse so MD had trouble with the pressure thing. She would stop too soon or lighten the pressure instead of increasing it. Well, eventually she got it. Then we went back to loneging. After a couple circles MD got Frosty to go around really nice and we let Frosty go. MD understood were she needed to stand and when pressure was needed. Then we went and got Dash. I did the loneging once adn then had MD do it. She did extremely well. Dash was going around in nice circles so we quit with loneging.
We led Dash over to where the saddle blanket was and while we were leading MD kept looking back at Dash and Dash was not leading very well. I told her that she should expect Dash to follow her. If she displayed an air of confidence in leading, Dash would pick up on her confidence and follow nicely. She stopped looking back and Dash followed nicely. We got the saddle pad and I started out first. I let Dash follow me while holding the saddle pad, then let her sniff it. All the while explaining to MD why I do something. The reason I have Dash follow the blanket is because if something moves away from them it doesn't pose a threat. Letting her sniff the blanket gave her confidence that it wasn't goign to hurt her. Then I commensed with rubbing her shoulder, back, hindquarters, neck and face. I knew before hand that rubbing Dash with the blanket and then petting her would give Dash a shock (courtesy of Toffy), so when I was gunna pet Dash for the first time I told MD that rubbing her will give her a shock (that time of year). I petted Dash and sure enough it gave her a shock. I said to prevent this (I don't want Dash to become afraid of my hand) I will start touching the ground before I pet Dash. Rubbed Dash with the saddle blanket again, touched the ground then pet Dash. No shock. From there I pulled the saddle blanket across dash from head to tail. Threw it on her back,  under her belly, and on her hindquarters. Then I took the blanket and heaved it up and over her head and back again. My arm got tired but Dash was totally fine with it when I was done. Next MD did the same thing on the other side. I explained to her that the reason I do all this crazy stuff with this saddle blanket is because I don't want a horse that moves off when I put the saddle blanket on. Doing all this will creat a horse that doesn't move when being saddled. I find it really annoying when horses move during saddling. Then we were done! It took us about two hours to finish with the fillies. But it was all worth it because I got to teach someone something about horses.