Here is a photo of the Choctaw Princess about five months on another cloudy day. You can see she is in good condition because she is bit sleeker than her usual fuzzy winter self. I let her out to roll and she spent most of her time tearing around bucking and kicking. She sweated just […]
Category Archives: Horses
thoughts on horses human and ridng
Figuring out a way to describe our encounters that is both positive and accurate for this post has been a bit of a challenge for me. When I am schooling, and especially when I am re-schooling I stay focused on the fleeting moments where everything is going well. These are the moments that I want […]
Up to now, everything I have asked of the Choctaw Princess is a brief addition to our normal daily routines. Adding a headstall with a bit builds on haltering. Finding her trigger points and asking her to relax is another aspect of grooming. And normally, ground driving with long lines is just another aspect of […]
I already know that the Choctaw Princess is already able and willing to figure out how the humans work. What I want to do at this point in her training is expand her ability to read and respond to people. Since she also gets irritated with what she regards as pointless repetition, figuring out how […]
The Choctaw Princess was so unconcerned with my putting the surcingle around her that I almost forgot to mention it. I laid it on her back, reached under her belly to grab the girth and buckled it just tightly enough that it did not slip. I got one ear and half an eye’s worth of […]
Getting on the Choctaw Princess’s back without first addressing her old injuries is asking for trouble. So I have decided to ground drive her first. But before I can ground-drive her, I need to persuade her that picking up a bit and putting it in her mouth is a reasonable thing to do. And the […]
The Choctaw Princess is dressed for winter. She has a dense coat that would serve to keep her alive in the minus-65o wind chill of the arctic cold front that came down across the Great Plains recently. But, here in New Mexico, we only caught the edge of it. Since she is a princess, she […]