2010 Dolly & Diamond

Hello,
This is my first post for 2010. Diamond is growing like a weed. She's only 1/4 Thoroughbred, but I suspect she got 100% of its genetics... Well, aside from the Curly coat! But her coat is also very fine like the Thoroughbred coat.

While I am writing this post, the wind is going crazy. The gusts are between 50-80 mph. The water trough got blown out of the pasture yesterday! Now it is loaded down with 800 lbs of water... So I have NOT worked with the horses these past few days, and I feel rather bad about it. But my guess is that they would both prefer to have their butts to the wind rather than be worked right now. So I'm finally posting about them instead. :)



In this picture, I worked on having both Dolly and Diamond stand far away from me, and then I would ask one to come toward me, and then back up. And then the other one come toward me, and back up again. Then I would have one stand still, and the other circle around me. Then that horse had to stand still while the other one circled around me. This practice came about because I want to be able to lead them both out of the horse pen sometimes, and sometimes I need one horse to move over and not the other. Right now, Diamond tries to follow Dolly whenever Dolly moves. They did really well at this game, though!!

Diamond had her front hooves trimmed recently, and she was pretty good. Teaching her to lift her hooves is a lot different than teaching Dolly the same thing. It's a work in progress. Dolly learned FAST because she is very sensitive- so all I would have to do is brush her shoulder lightly with my finger, and she'd search her brain for the correct answer to make the touching stop. Diamond is not at all sensitive to touch, so I'm having to experiment with new ways of teaching her.

The other day, my 11 year old niece rode Dolly around. She did great. Afterward, I threw the saddle onto Diamond's back because I didn't want to throw the saddle into the snow. ;) Diamond didn't care about it at all! It was her first time wearing a saddle.

What's very strange to me is that I got Diamond mostly as a companion for Dolly (and also with an eye out as a possible future riding horse for my husband). But I find that most of my horsey time is spent with Diamond. Compared to Diamond, Dolly seems fairly trustworthy training-wise, whereas Diamond needs to learn A LOT before I can consider her a fairly safe horse to be around.

Diamond has the SWEETEST personality. But she thinks she's still an itty-bitty foal and that she needs to come up TO MY FACE and stop. Sometimes she rests her chin on top of my head! We are working on personal space each and every time I am near her. But I don't want to discourage her love of humans and being around people, so I'm trying to do it in a very gentle way. For example, when she comes RIGHT up to me, I'll ask her to back up a couple of steps and THEN give her the nose rubs she desires.

Here is a short video clip of Diamond and Dolly playing. I am SO glad they get along well and seem to like each other. Dolly hasn't always gotten along with all horses.



So definitely, my goal is to continue training Diamond, but also to work more with DOLLY again!!! Dolly has given a handful of pony rides, as well as some carts rides in the past couple of months, but *I* haven't actually ridden her or done very much training with her.