Shuffle and Slide

[Anastasie Chevalier]

Ana led her buckskin tobiano Pintabian mare down to her outdoor classroom. The three year old was coming along nicely in her training and would be perfect to use to demonstrate what she wanted the students to do, and not a large as her other two horses. She was even considering selling her Vanner gelding and getting a pony that she could train up for her classes.

Once in the field, she let Paris loose so that the filly had a chance to inspect the entire field, including the speakers that surrounded it. She turned the wireless microphone she wore on and smiled as the filly jumped backwards as the speakers made a slight crackling sound as she adjusted the headset she was wearing. She had tried the ones that attached to her clothes, but they just got annoying if she needed to remove or add a layer.

As the students began to arrive she smiled and greeted them. "Find a spot for you and your equine friend in the field and just take they time running your hands over every inch of their body. Use this time as a chance to bond and we'll get started as soon as everyone has arrived." There was only one student she hadn't met before and to him she handed a hunter green carrot-stick and twelve-foot lead (the two things her students knew to bring with them).

Calling:
@neigh
@running9
Elizabeth Toman
Fionn Paquet
Rose Hoff
Tyler Reynolds

[Elizabeth Toman]

Libby grumbled quietly as she groomed Storm, getting him ready for Natural Horsemanship. Her fist met the gelding's nose as he snaked his head around to nip her on the side - don't get her wrong, she didn't punch him, she just put her fist between his nose and her side, which he'd already nipped earlier.

Once the gelding was groomed, she grabbed the sky blue lead and stick she had selected while she took the class with Ember, and led the Quarter Horse out to the field that they called a classroom for the lessons with Ms Chevalier.

Arriving, she gave the woman a haughty smile and entered the field, though she did give the woman's horse and appreciative look as she led her gelding toward the back corner. She wasn't too sure about the idea of running her hands all over him, she'd likely lose at least one limb she was sure. However, she didn't want to get in the woman's bad books right from the get-go, so she attached the longer lead onto the halter, leaving the other lead hanging down and dangling on the ground, holding the long lead, she carefully began to run her hands down the gelding's neck and along his back, always keeping a careful eye on what his head was doing. She snorted a laugh when she saw that Storm had picked up the other lead and was holding it in his mouth.

[Fionn Paquet]

Finn felt more than a little nervous as he finished grooming the bay gelding he had been assigned and picked up a damp cloth so that he could buff the gelding's coat before taking in out to the field where the class was supposed to take place. "I just hope that you have some idea of where we're going, bud." He said to the horse as he threw the cloth onto the top of the grooming bucket and removed the cross-ties.

Before leading the horse outside, he took a quick look down to make sure that he was at least presentable to seen in public and then they made their way to the field. He wasn't surprised to see that he wasn't the first to arrive and gave the teacher a charming smile. "I'm Finn... well, Fionn, Paquet, and this is Casper." He introduced himself and his horse. He gladly accepted what the woman offered him and went to find a space for him and the giant horse he was leading.

Copying the girl there, he clipped the new lead onto the halter, though he removed the other lead and used it as a belt around his waist, and began to run his hands along Casper's coat, which felt smooth and clean under his hands. He knew that this wouldn't be a Paquet-approved course, but he felt that it would be the best way to get to know the gelding he had been assigned to work with, if his father found out and did have an apoplexy at him taking the course, he was sure that he could move into another class next semester. If not? Damn shame!

[Deleted]

Amber lead Rapunzel into the natural horsemanship field and glanced at her teacher.  "Hello Ms. Chevalier" she greeted, nervously.  She got her carrot stick and lead rope.  She looked at the other two students and took a spot next to Finn.  "Hi Finn" she greeted, softly.   

Amber cringed when her teacher told them to start touching their horses, remembering at the summer clinic when she had been scolded for keeping her hands off the spots that Rapunzel didn't want her to touch.  When Amber's brother, who she loved and trusted more then anything else, touched her in certain places, it scared her.  He would beg her to hold still and if she didn't then he would get mad and hold her down, scaring her even more.  Rapunzel was much bigger and stronger then Amber and could easily defend herself, but Amber knew that her horse loved her and would never want to hurt her.  Amber ran her hands along Rapunzel's body, but only on the places that she knew her horse didn't mind her touching, because Amber loved Rapunzel but there was no way that she was going to guilt or scare her horse into submission.  It was just cruel and she didn't understand why they were instructed to do it.

[Anastasie Chevalier]

Ana watched the students already working with their horses, making a note to have a word with Amber at the end of the lesson, she needed to get to the bottom of the girl's issues before she transmitted them into her horse and ruined a perfectly good mount - after all, it didn't take abuse to make a horse head-shy or touchy around other people, they were things they could also learn from their handler being too hesitant with their handling.

Once the majority of the class had arrived, and the alarm on her phone signaled that it was the start of class, she closed the gate to the field – her version of closing the classroom door – and walked to the middle of the field where she picked up Paris’ lead and turned to address her class. “Welcome to a brand new year of Natural Horsemanship. We are going to start with something that the majority of you can probably by now do in your sleep, but as we have new people in the class, bear with me to start off.

“Today’s lesson is going to be focusing on how well you can get your horse to yield to a suggestion, or respond to an indirect yield if you would rather. So I will start off with explaining the basics of getting your horse to yield to a feel and then yield to a suggestion.” She smiled around at the students. “Before you all start rolling your eyes and groaning at me, those who feel confident enough to not need the instructions, are free to begin working on getting your equine friend to yield. For those of you who would like a reminder, let’s begin.

“We’ll start with asking our friends to yield their hindquarters. Stand behind your horse’s shoulder where the girth would be. Place the hand not holding the lead against their side, roughly where your lower leg would be if you were on their back, turn or flex the head towards you. With light pressure from your hand ask them to move the hindquarters away from you while maintaining the flex to head and neck. If he does not move ask a little harder with your hand if he still does not move you should give him a light smack .If he still does not move you will need to give him a sharper blow – keep asking until he moves. When he moves off your hand release the pressure and give him a loose rein.” She demonstrated with Paris as she spoke and rubbed the filly’s forehead as she delicately moved away.

“Horses are great on the fact that they work on comfort vs discomfort. If you make them uncomfortable enough, they will move away from the discomfort to become comfortable again, and we do this with the four phases of pressure:

Phase one: involves using light pressure with the hand and thereby asking the horse to move with 4 ounces of pressure or less. This is the phase that we eventually want the horse to respond to and respect as an aid.
If he doesn’t respond to phase one within three seconds go to phase two and so on until there is a response
Phase two: a squeeze against the horse’s skin with thumb and forefinger.
Phase three: squeezing the muscle
Phase four: squeezing the bone

Make sure that there is only 3 seconds between phases or the horse will not link the phases together and will not learn the lesson.” She didn’t demonstrate the four phases on the filly as she didn’t need it. “If you get through all four phases, and your horse still isn’t moving, start back at phase one again, and increase the intensity of phase four until your horse gets the idea. Once you can get your horse to yield to a feel in every direction, you can move onto getting your friend to yield to a suggestion:

“For the hindquarter yield: Flex the horses head towards you. Stand beside the horse’s hip looking over his back and about half a meter from him. Bring up your life like a solder on parade and ask him to move using the four phases:
Phase 1: raise your hand and wave it towards the hip.
Phase 2: Use rhythmic motion by moving your hand back and forth towards the hip.
Phase 3: Touch the hip lightly with the hand.
Phase 4: Smack the hip with your hand.
Continue to use the yield to a suggestion yield to move all the parts of the horse which you yielded in yield to a feel, ie yield the front of the horse, yield backwards, forwards and sideways. Just make sure your horse is yielding from a suggestion and not from a feel on the lead rope.” She smiled toward Paris, who yielded to a suggestion much quicker than she did to a feel.

[Elizabeth Toman]

Libby rolled her eyes when Amber entered the field with her horse. She'd never actually spoken to the other student, but they shared two classes and she was just one of those people that the gymnast hated on sight. She turned her back on the girl and put her entire attention on her gelding, which she needed to do anyway as if she didn't give Storm all of her attention, there was too much chance that he would bite her, or worse, just take off.

She listened attentively as the woman spoke about what they were to see with their horses. It didn't sound too difficult, she was sure that it was all doable... or at least she hoped so. She was just a little hesitant about standing too close to the horse with his head turned toward her, when she tried to keep his mouth as far away from her as possible.

Putting on her game-face, she stepped up to the gelding's side, flexed his head toward her and placed her hand on his side. It took all the way to phase four before the gelding even shifted his weight, and she was sure that he moved then because he was bored, rather than because she had asked him. Going through the process again a few more times though, the gelding began to get the hint and it got to the point where it seemed that she only had to think about asking him to yield in a direction and he moved. Was this what Ms Chevalier was talking about yielding to a suggestion. "Good boy!" She praised him with a huge grin and a hug once she decided that she'd got the hang of it.

[Fionn Paquet]

Finn was already running his hands over Casper's body and turned when he heard his name mentioned and he gave Amber a smile in return. "Hey, love." He said warmly, not missing the first girl's reaction to Amber's arrival, there seemed to be some bad blood between the two.

He listened as the teacher explained what they were going to do, hoping that he could remember most of it, though he was sure that as long as he remembered the first bit the rest would just flow... or at least he hoped it would.

As he began to work his way through the whole yield to a feel thing, it seemed that the gelding was an old-hand at this and he moved away as soon as the pressure was applied. Finn barely had to even begin phase one and Casper would respond. It was good and bad at the same time. His horse was a true school master, and a great teacher, but there didn't seem to be anything that Finn could teach the horse and he could see their relationship getting stale, rather quickly - which would probably only turn into a problem as he didn't want to have to bug Ms Carr for a new mount, but he also didn't want to make the gelding sour from his emotions. Maybe it was time to talk to his mother - to talk to his dad - about getting him a horse of his own.

He quickly moved onto the yield to a suggestion and finally found something he had to work at, as Casper was a little confused about what was being asked of him without the physical side of things. After a having to get to phase three for each direction the first couple of times and then to phase two. He finally managed to get the gelding to yield backwards to a suggestion and was happy with that as he halted Casper and gave him a hug. Giving him a couple minutes break before going back to it.

[Deleted]

When Amber had walked into she cringed when the girl rolled her eyes at her.  She didn't know this girl.  What could she possibly have done to offend her?  She tried to ignore it as she said hello to Finn, but his reply caused her to cringed even more.  Where had that come from and what did it mean?  She hardly knew Finn and  the only person who had even told her that he loved her was her brother.   

Amber tried not to freak out about it, but she kept on thinking about it and she tried to focus on the next exercise, but Rapunzel wasn't listening to her.  She knew that it was her fault, for not focusing and for being too nervous.  She kept on pushing on Rapunzel's hindquarters but she wouldn't budge even though she had done this many times before and Amber tried pushing harder, but she still wouldn't move and Amber was starting to feel mean.  She stopped and just looked her Rapunzel and tried to refrain herself from burying her face in her horses mane, which was really all that she wanted to do right now.  Amber gently stroked Rapunzel's  neck and then she held her horses face in her hands and looked into her eyes.  She was now completely focused on her horse. 

[Tyler Reynolds]

Instead of eating Tyler decided to take a small nap, except he didn’t hear his alarm go off and so he was up out of bed and down to the barn, luckily he had changed into barn clothes before laying down. He practically ran down to the barn and collected Roman. The gelding was fairly clean and so Tyler quickly ran a brush over his body.

He walked with an intention in his step to the Natural Horsemanship field to see that class of course had already started. He could hear Ms. Chevalier’s voice in her microphone as she explained something to the newer students in the class.

Tyler thought it would be best if he had listened too as he didn’t entirely know what was going on. He had the carrot stick and lead rope and so he was all set he just needed to figure out what was going on. He took a deep breath and tried not to make direct eye contact with Ms. Chevalier. Listening he was quickly filled in on what he had missed.

The boy did as the woman instructed and turning Roman’s head towards him Tyler place four fingers where his leg would usually be and the gelding responded like an old pro.

[Deleted]

Chase only gave himself ten minutes as he thought that Brody was going to be in his stall and cleaned, but no. The Thoroughbred was out in the pasture and didn’t have a blanket on so he was dirty. The boy shook his head, ”Of course!” He was mad, but he grabbed the halter and went off to collect the gelding.

Once that was done he had to get to work on grooming Brody. It wouldn’t have been bad if he was an easy keeper but not he found almost always a way to make himself dirty or something that required more than five minutes to correct. So Chase just quickly curried him and brushed him off, putting the grooming kit back, the boy led the gelding down to the Natural Horsemanship field where again of course class had already started.

Chase would just have to explain if Ms. Chevalier asked why he was late. He would for next class give himself the time needed in case a situation like this occurred again. He had his carrot stick and lead rope and so he listened to what they were going to be done for the class.

Brody was pretty good at yielding to things. Chase listened to how Ms. Chevalier wanted it to be done. He turned the Thoroughbred’s head towards him and lightly touched his barrel, like he does of other times Brody almost jumped away from the touch. ”Calm down ya pansy.” He kept trying it again until Brody didn’t jump at the touch.