Starlight’s Training Adventure!

[SA Farm]

Aw look at them, so festive!
Happy Easter, all

 

[Cadence A Waller]

Aw look at them, so festive!
Happy Easter, all

Thank you!!! Hope you had a happy Easter!

 

[Cadence A Waller]

This is going to be a nice long post.
This morning I was leading star to turn her out like I do every morning. I don't usually have any problems turning her out as we have been doing this for about a month every morning. Then a bird in the woods squawks. Well star trots around a little bit then we are fine. Then we keep walking and all of a sudden for some reason star takes off! I mean there was no way I could stop her. Well she runs are couple yards them stops and starts eating grass. Well I take her back up the little hill (she lead nicely and didn't give me any trouble) that she had run down and the same thing happens. Well long story short, I try turning her out in the pasture and then trying again, and I try keeping her attention on me like yielding her hindquarters and backing up every so often But every single time we walked back up the hill star would end up taking off. Some of the time I kept her in a circle around me for a little bit, but it ended up with her using all of her power to run down that little hill and eat grass. Well I didn't want to give up, but I had tried so many different approaches to walking down that hill. I didn't see anything changing if I kept trying to get her to do it other than us both getting frustrated. So I ended up leading her into the pasture, rotating her hindquarters, and having her back up (which she did very well) then praising her for them and letting her go.

Well I am definitely going to try taking her down that hill again later today. I just didn't see it happening in that moment...

 

[Cadence A Waller]

Yay!!!!
Well I basically did the same walk I did this morning and things went completely different!! Star didn’t spook once! She walked nice and carefully down the hill with me and that was that. No trouble at all! I guess she must have just been having a bad morning.

 

[sassysarah]

Yay!!!!
Well I basically did the same walk I did this morning and things went completely different!! Star didn’t spook once! She walked nice and carefully down the hill with me and that was that. No trouble at all! I guess she must have just been having a bad morning.

Yes!
Great job! Glad you finally got her to go without taking off! Great work!

 

[Cadence A Waller]

Yes!
Great job! Glad you finally got her to go without taking off! Great work!

Thank you!

 

[Gallop4ever]

Was looking through "Other pets and livestock" forum, when I ran across your thread here.
Star is really cute and pretty! It seems like you're doing an excellent job training her!
Please keep us updated!

 

[sassysarah]

I would like to work on lunging with her but don't have a round pen... can you still lunge without one?

You probably already know this by now, but you can definitely lunge her without a round a pen!
I don't have a round pen either and I lunge all my horses.
I lunge them over jumps, up and down hills, into ponds, puddles etc.
Lunging is so much fun! Have you lunged Star yet?

 

[Cadence A Waller]

Was looking through "Other pets and livestock" forum, when I ran across your thread here.
Star is really cute and pretty! It seems like you're doing an excellent job training her!
Please keep us updated!

Thank you!!! It is really nice to hear that! Will definitely keep you updated!

 

[Cadence A Waller]

You probably already know this by now, but you can definitely lunge her without a round a pen!
I don't have a round pen either and I lunge all my horses.
I lunge them over jumps, up and down hills, into ponds, puddles etc.
Lunging is so much fun! Have you lunged Star yet?

Thanks for the tips! I haven’t done a lot of lunging yet as I am still teaching her to move her shoulder away from me. I have already taught her to move her hindquarters away from me so sometimes she gets a little confused with that. But it has been really useful to use whenever she spooks.