October 1, 2012

Plans

My overall goal is to do absolutely nothing but ground work from the time Woven Web gets here until late March - April. I want to get ground manners on her, teach her to lunge and ground drive and get her introduced to a bit and saddle, etc. Obviously time will be extended if she needs it, but this is my rough plan. 

October 7th - Arrival

First 7-10 days my plan is to let her settle into a routine, adjust and not do anything to add stress to her move. I'll spend time in the evenings grooming her but no work. 

October 20th - Begin Lunging

Starting with free lunging 2-3 times a week. Introduce her to the concept of an arena! Will also plan to incorporate the first of two natural horsemanship techniques I actually like, joining up. I have a feeling I will be spending one or two very long days at the barn trying to accomplish the joining up. But we'll eventually get there.

November 1st - Respect Lunging

Time to learn what a line is all about. Learn to walk / trot on a line and change it up every few times with a respect lunging session or two. The only other concept of natural horsemanship I plan to use. 

I plan to spend the remainder of the year improving her fitness, bonding and polishing lunging skills. With the holidays and bad weather being unavoidable it will be tricky to be consistent for a few weeks toward end of the year. In the new year we'll start to introduce a bit, bridle, surcingle and saddle, pretty much in that order. Closer to that time I'll be putting up a new quarterly rough schedule.

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