coraa | Horse Camp, Day Four

I'm taking my afternoon hermit-break (part of your balanced ~~breakfast~~ con schedule!), and so I wanted to finish up about horse camp while it's on my mind

The fourth day was some writing--mostly filling in the blanks and making connections and notes. When I write that fast I have a tendency to leave stuff out, so I put some of it back in. But mostly my brain was recuperating.

At mid-afternoon I went out to take some pictures of the plants and terrain, but Miss Tia had something else in mind. As I was circling around the fence to take some pictures, I saw her doing something that Stacey-the-trainer had told me about when we did our communicating with horses lesson a few months ago. Whenever I moved away, she flicked her ear toward me. Whenever I moved back, she flicked it forward again. I tried this a few times: flick flick flick flick. And then, on a hunch, I stood still... and she immediately turned around and came straight over to say hello to me, swinging her head up over the fence so that I could give her a hug and pat her on the neck. (She also tried to eat my camera strap, of course.)

Then, a bit later in the evening, I went out for a ride on Pandora. Unlike the lesson, this was just a for-fun ride, and Pandora seemed to understand that because she went back to being a very easy horse instead of the I'm-not-coddling-you-anymore horse of my lesson. She was in a good mood for it: she'd been relaxing in the sun all day, so she was happy to go along at a very gentle walk. It was a lot of fun and very relaxing, just to spend time ambling around with her.

Then I got to watch

dancinghorse work on training Ephiny. Ephiny is a young, green horse who is getting ready to start under saddle, so

dancinghorse was longeing her.

First she started by using a body wrap to circle Ephiny around the neck/chest and then also around her body lengthwise. The point of this was to make Ephiny more aware of her body, and it was kind of fun to see her wrapped up like a present:

From Horse Camp, May 2010

Then they got ready to work!

From Horse Camp, May 2010

But Ephiny wasn't moving on the longe like that, so

dancinghorse walked with her a bit:

From Horse Camp, May 2010

Then she took the wraps off. She told me later that Ephiny wasn't quite ready for that: between the wraps and the instructions Ephiny was getting information/sensory overload, so she needed, well, less sensory overload.

At that point, Ephiny started moving. It was hard to capture that in photo form, so I used my camera's (poor) video function. Click the picture to go to the video on picasaweb. (There's no audio except wind hissing and some feedback, so probably best to mute, but you can see Ephiny walking around

dancinghorse.)

From Horse Camp, May 2010

They continued to work together.... with an audience. See, Tia and Camilla also wanted to be involved:

From Horse Camp, May 2010

...until Ephiny decided she was CONCENTRATING, darn it, and Tia was being DISTRACTING, and chased her off. ;) Good for Ephiny!

Anyway, more pictures ahoy!

This one, I call "Single Ladies," because it's the three young mares: Camilla, Ephiny and Tia.