Friday, October 05, 2007

road work

On Wednesday, we met with Buffy again for a driving lesson. The day we had with Becky and Butch was amazing, but in the training of a horse (or any animal for that matter) nothing is "seated" in one doing. There's still a lot of work that needs to be done... mostly on my part I think. My driving skills need improvement.... I am finding that driving is a lot like riding and driving isn't anything like riding!!!! so, it's a work in progress.

This week, Buffy wanted to get us out on the road a bit. Not that driving a horse on the road is the greatest idea, but, you need to be able to do it. You never know when a road might cross your path, or you might need to use parts of it to get to another spot. There wasn't a ton of car traffic on the road, but enough to test the waters a bit. Tonka managed them beautifully... even an oil truck. Most drivers of cars, are fairly respectful of a horse, and maybe seeing Buffy and I tailing behind, they got the idea that we were in a training session.

Thursday, when I had my riding lesson, I told Laura that I would be happy to bring Tonka over and rake out her arena..... it would be good practice for us, and useful "work"... so I think we might try and get over there on Saturday.


Today, however, I had a very pleasant surprise!!! Ed and I took a run up to Meader's (where we got Tonka's harness) and got the next (and hopefully.. one of the last) things needed for all this driving business... a CART!!!! this is a nice sturdy cart and will be great for training and just driving in general. Someday, I hope to have a nice wooden "Meadowbrook" cart, but this one will more than do what I need it to....... SO... now we start the work of putting all the training parts and pieces together........