Workin' the Mini Girls

Yesterday I got to work the mini girls (Toy Toy and Angel) for a good hour using the lunge line. It got kinda dizzying after some time. :P

On my walk down there, I was actually able to get Rave Review (pronounced more like raver-view though) to come up to the fence for me! She didn't really eat the grass I offered her, but I was able to get a picture of her scratching her ear with her hind hoof. :)

Rave is a black Arab, Polish-type, I think. She has a very float-y trot, and... Oh wait. Nevermind! That isn't Rave, that's Porschia. The only way I can really tell them apart is that Rave has a halter on and this mare doesn't. I know Porschia is black as well, and I'm pretty sure she's Polish-type Arab, but she might be Egyptian. *shrugs* Too confusing.

Anyway, after I got down there we cleaned out a few stalls and then I got to working Angel Eyes. After grooming on her a little (mainly just picking out her hooves), I grabbed the lunge line and lunge whip, and started lunging her.

She did great at first, and she definitely does not have any excuses about why the puddles will eat her. :P However, once she was a bit more tired, she decided to push her luck on being lazy. I tried a lot of stuff (snapping the whip, kissing to her, and so on) to get her to move, but she wouldn't. Instead, she would just slow down, stop, and angle her rump away from me so I couldn't pop her there.

Finally I sensibly asked MiniOwner how I could get Angel to go. The plan:

• Put the chain onto her halter so she'd pay attention more (it helped a bit, but not terribly much).
• Keep one foot on a small-ish rock in the ground to ensure that the horse is doing all the work, and the handler is staying in one spot.
• Every time she wants to be lazy, I reel her in towards me (yay for strong-ish arms :P) until she was to where I could pop her on the rump to get her moving. (It may sound mean, but 1) she has tons of fluff still, and it doesn't hurt her, and 2) she does need to be disciplined for stuff like that. Otherwise she'll just become a very lazy horse that thinks she can her way with anything.)
• Continue above two points until she stays at a steady trot and has nice slack in the line.

I had to do that for probably about 15-20 minutes, but it helped TONS. She realized she wouldn't get away with being lazy and that it wouldn't kill her to keep moving. After she did a few rounds especially good, I had her walk in to me (which is something she's very awesome at :)) and - after letting her have a bit of a carrot - put her to bed.

Then I pulled out Toy. As soon as I was in the position to lunge her, BOOM - she must've had megatons of energy. For some reason she didn't want to canter, but just gallop. At certain moments I would actually have to almost sit on the ground to keep her from moving my position (she, unlike Angel, doesn't leave much slack in the line).

After awhile she finally slowed down (just a tad!), and I put her to bed after lunging her for about twenty minutes. She didn't really get in trouble for being lazy, and I managed to get a picture of her lunging at the trot. :)

And of *course* she has to be blinking. XD Silly mare. :)