Learning a new Dance

[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." The returning student knew to bring their twelve-foot lead and carrot stick, and she had a selection of them lined up outside the field, which she told Chase, Lacy and Ronan to help themselves to a set.

Calling:
@running7
@lacy
@lukamason
Miranda Florin
Othello Buskirk
@ronan

[Othello Buskirk]

Othello sat on the ground by Harry's feet, his head between his knees as he waited for the nausea to pass. He'd had an appointment at the hospital the past weekend and once again they had decided to change his med around and he was beginning to think that the new ones were going to kill him, though he had promised to give them a week before he made a complaint about them - he was just thankful that that week was almost up.

Blowing out a breath, he stood up and grinned at the gelding who was carefully watching him. "I'm fine." He assured Harry as he removed the cross-ties, connected the twelve-foot lead to the halter, picked up the carrot stick and led the gelding out to the field where there class was held.

He gave Ms Chevalier a smile as he entered and walked over to the back of the field where he halted his liver chestnut Suffolk Punch and began to go through the process of running his hands along the calm gelding's body, knowing that if he use the horse as a buffer, he could lean against his horse if need be. It was as he was stroking down the gelding's body and under his belly, that the boy suddenly realised that he hadn't picked up his backpack, which had his drinks and snacks in it, he guessed he just had to hope for the best, and that his sugar-levels would remain steady until class was over.

[Miranda Florin]

Miranda finished grooming Sye and rubbed the mare's nose before offering her a piece of carrot, which the palomino snuffled up rather willingly. After making sure that the mare's halter was buckled back properly after she'd loosened it to get under the straps for her grooming, she exchanged the lead that she'd tied the mare with for the twelve-foot lead that she had received... Way back when. In her freshman year, when she had started at Blue Ridge. Sure, some would have found it boring, taking the same class for all four years, but with a variety of horses, and the varied subjects that one could approach within Natural Horsemanship, it really had never bothered Miranda enough to start moving her class schedule around.

As she was about to lead Sye out, she spotted a familiar backpack sitting in the corner of the grooming stalls. Ground-tying the mare, she walked over to it and checked briefly to make sure that it did indeed belong to whom she thought it did before slinging it across one of her shoulders, then returning to her mare.

Entering the field, she smiled at Ms. Chevalier's instructions, then approached Leo and Harry, smiling at her boyfriend, “Forget anything?” After once-more dropping the mare's lead, she walked over, dropping the backpack gently against one of the fence-posts before returning to where Sye was standing. Her voice low enough not to be overheard, she asked, “How are you doing?” as she started on the exercise they'd been assigned.

[Anastasie Chevalier]

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.

[Othello Buskirk]

Leo rested his head against the gelding's neck as he stopped for a breather, jumping when he heard a voice he recognised. He grinned from ear to ear as he watched his girlfriend drop his bag by the fence. "I owe you big time!" He said quietly, resisting the urge to hug her.

He went back to running hand hands over Harry's body, the carrot stick wasn't needed as the gelding didn't have any issues of being touched, at least by Leo. The boy knew that his horse would have an opinion about having his manhood handled by a stranger - only because the last stranger to do so, had gelded him.

He looked at Miranda when she asked her question. "I have my good moments, and my not so good ones." He replied honestly. "Right now is one of the not so good ones." He blew out a breath. "But I'll get by... get through it." There just wasn't any humour in saying that he'd live. He fell silent as Ms Chevalier addressed the class. He knew the steps for yielding, but decided to remain still as the teacher explained everything.

He went straight into yield to a suggestion, as he knew that this was the yield that he really needed to work on. He made sure to keep his breathing steady so that he didn't forget to breathe and get light-headed. He couldn't help but laugh at the look Harry gave him when he was trying to ask the gelding for a hindquarter yield, and he used the carrot stick to tap the gelding's hip when Harry moved toward him, not away. "Don't be a mule." He grumped and laughed again as the gelding's ears flopped to the sides.

[Deleted]

Caroline walked to the other side of her mare. Somehow the Thoroughbred got mud caked on her barrel and her legs. ”Silly mare.” The girl shook her head and continued to groom the horse. Suddenly Caroline realized that she had lost track of time and dropped the cross ties and led Lucy out to the Natural Horsemanship field. There were only two students there and so she just moved to a free spot and listened to Ms. Chevalier.

She looked at Lucy and thought, At least you’re clean. Mentally shaking her head, her full attention was on the instructor. Luckily she had just missed the first part of the class and heard the instructions. Flexing the mares head towards her, Caroline pushed the mare until she moved. It took some pressure the mare moved her hindquarters. ”Good girl.”

Caroline turned her attention to Ms. Chevalier again and listened to the four phases for the different types of yielding. The girl knew that Lucy was flighty but she was getting better and as of right now she was on better behavior as opposed to her running around like someone was chasing after her with a gun. Caroline went through the phases again, the mare was being inconsistent between phase two and three and would respond to number two and then the next time around not respond until phase three.

[Miranda Florin]

Miranda smiled at the expression on Leo's face, glad to see that he could still smile, even though she knew life wasn't being all too kind to him. She kept her attention on her mare as he answered her question, although she listened, frowning into Sye's barrel as she heard his analysis of the day. “If you need to, I'm sure Harry could do this in his sleep while you rest.” She turned enough that Leo could see the faint smile, that she was trying to make a small joke, “I do hope you feel better, though.”

As the teacher began her class, she looked up to where the woman was, although there wasn't an issue with hearing the woman's voice. She listened to the structure of yielding once more, although she began working with Sye before Ms. Chevalier finished, as the woman had said that they might. As she approached Sye's hindquarters with her hand raised and waving, the mare turned slightly, and her ears turned in Miranda's direction, but she stepped away willingly enough, and Miranda relaxed her energy, smiling at the mare, “Good girl.”

Having established that the mare remembered most of their training, Miranda moved to the palomino's nose, knowing that yielding backwards was the one they continued to have trouble with, and approached Sye, having to touch the mare's nose before the Trak took a step backwards.