Our Starting Point - Part 1

I’m going to break this up into two posts because I’m having problems with PFI and I don’t want to lose what I have.

Over the last few years I’ve been on a handful of discussion boards. What I noticed quickly was that those who were the first to offer advice/critique of videos/pictures (even if they weren’t asked for it) that were posted were those who never posted any videos/pictures of themselves.

I’ve been hesitant to post video because I hate being judged. I’m not perfect in my horse training skills and I’ve never claimed to be but what I do seems to work for me. Can I improve? Most definitely! That being said I have a greater amount of respect for you guys and your opinions which is why I’m posting this here.

John, after following your blog with Jessie I decided I needed to video my starting point with Lucy. I really want to challenge myself to work with her and get her where she needs to be. I really want to do this with all of them but we’ll start with Lucy.

Here are a few pictures of the princess. She’s really starting to fill out and mature (physically). It’s hard to notice when you see her everyday but she’s finally thickening up!

She's standing downhill in this one.



I love this pic!





Her normal "goober" look.



Last night I had my sister take some video of me doing some of the groundwork lessons with her to establish my starting point. It’s a bit shaky at times and my niece is in the background riding (turn the volume up for her commentary – it’s pretty funny) but it will do.

Credit needs to go where credit is due though as Jaimee did a lot of groundwork with her prior to her coming up her and if you look back I really haven’t done much.

For you reference- MFF = monkey f*cking a football

In this video I was desensitizing her left side to the rope. Yes – I’m rope challenged! Can you hear my niece? She’s learned that if she takes Nikki to the bottom of the hill and she’ll trot up to the top of it. She cracks me up.



I’m desensitizing her right side in this video. Take note that my left shoulder blade has been very sore again and it feels like someone is jabbing a knife in it every time I move it so while I typically look like a MFF on my left side this is a bit to the extreme.



Here is my desensitizing to the stick and string. Doesn’t she look frightened? Actually she needs to quit looking away but we weren’t fixing problems last night we were showing where we are at for starters. When I was on her right side she was a bit nervous with me whacking the ground in the end only because she got whacked a few times (oops). I need to work on my left side a bit more.