We had a great day playing with the horses on Saturday. Meghan got to ride Tex for a little while and they both did great! She is hopefully going to adopt him at the end of the school year.
Tex has had about a dozen rides at this point, most of them bareback. However, I’ve recently started riding him with a saddle. He is a smart little pony and has done very well with training so far.
Here’s a short clip that Dawn posted on youtube:
This was a lot of fun. We left Tex on a lead rope while Meghan rode him to make sure it was a positive experience for everyone involved. This gave me a chance to explain to her some of the cues I’ve been using and show her some good things to work on.
Having Tex on a lead rope worked out really well. At first, we let him just follow me, so Meghan could get an idea of what he felt like, as well as work on asking him to both move forward and stop.
Then, we had a bit of fun playing with cones. We would all walk toward a cone. Then, 6-8 feet from the cone I would stop or walk to the side away from the cone. Meghan would have to steer Tex toward the cone and keep him going past me. This was a great way for both of them to work on steering. It was a really good exercise for Tex because it helped him start to listen to Meghan’s cues, instead of just following me.