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Topic: Groundwork Clinic Report and Photos! (Read 3,805 times)

schwung
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Groundwork Clinic Report and Photos!
« Thread Started on Jul 31, 2006, 11:28am »

First of all, I want to thank everyone who attended the clinic this weekend. It was a huge success, the progress that was made with the horses was incredible and it was so great to meet everyone!

I have tons and tons of photos, and I'm sure everyone has a different story/perspective to share about the clinic so we can use this thread for everyone who was there to give their updates and post pictures.

Dorothy and Rick are a great team. Rick is a wonderful mix of rugged old fashioned cowboy with a surprisingly caring heart, a funny Jack Russel Terrier rescue that adores him, and a penchant for tiny little Shetland ponies (he kept threatening to take Cactus Flower home with him). Dorothy has a soft, kind approach and I was quite surprised to learn that she is a very enlightened western-style trainer, who is not only knowledgable in equine acupressure points and chiropractic, but also preaches the importance of a properly balanced nutrition program, equine dentistry, and saddle fit. They both have a great sense of humor and were excellent at tailoring their approach according to the particular problems each horse was having and what the owner was hoping to address with the horse in the clinic. The clinic was mainly groundwork-focused but they ended up riding quite a few of the horses in the round pen as several of them were ready and it was the logical next step.

The participating horses were:
A paint gelding and a bay mare owned by Dorothy
B - owned by Sarah Ricks and her husband, brought by Juliane
Ace - ex-bucking horse now owned by Juliane
Patience - ex-CBER horse owned by Juliane
Azalea - owned by Peri (pdevlieg)
Skittles - 18 year old POA gelding owned by Peri's 9 year old daughter
Oliver - CBER horse owned by Bonnie (jaybird)
Honeycutt - SAFE horse
Vanna - SAFE horse now owned by me, worked by Jenny (cardicorgi) and Angie (horsecrazi)
Cactus Flower - Shetland pony owned by me, worked by myself, my 10 year old son and Peri's 7 year old daughter
Tessa - aka Spawn of Satan, my 2 year old filly

The clinic started Saturday morning with turning the horses loose in the arena to run as a herd. The purpose of this was to let the horses run off some steam, get an idea of how they interacted in a herd, how they responded to Rick as he ran them around, and who would be the first to get tired of running and turn their attention to Rick instead of the herd. The other purpose was to get each handler to go in and catch their horses afterwards, so that if there were issues catching a horse, those could be addressed first.

Oliver turned out to be the easiest and first to be caught. Skittles was extremely protective of his mare, Azalea, so he spent most of the time running around trying to keep all the other (much larger!) horses away from his woman. Once they were caught, they were put in a time out away from each other for most of the clinic. Honeycutt was one of the last to get caught but eventually conceded once put in the round pen, and Ace took a good hour and a half to get a halter on him.

Here are some photos of the horses running loose on Saturday:
Dorothy's two horses (wearing saddles) with B and Ace:
[image]

Ace in front, B and Oliver in back, while Skittles tries desperately to shield Azalea in the middle:
[image]

Running:

Everyone is tired now:
[image]

« Last Edit: Apr 25, 2007, 12:00pm by jaybird »