Michelin Man?
The second visit to the pedestal.
You may remember, in my last post, I was quietly confident that I would succeed in getting Aero to put all four feet onto the pedestal at the same time. As I approached it, though, I began to have my doubts. Maybe I was being overconfident?
I set up the camera, balanced against a stone to keep it level. Took Aero around to approach the pedestal… and then this happened.
Aaaaargh.
For your benefit, I chopped out the four minutes of beautiful, but boring, blue sky that make up the rest of this video. Here’s the summary of what took place at ground level :
As Aero walked forward to cross the pedestal that first time, for a brief moment, he had three feet on it at the same time. Then he popped the front feet down onto the ground, keeping the back feet up. I praised him loads and thought “Yes, I’m sure we can nail this today!”
I turned him around and asked him to step up again. I took my time; didn’t rush things. I really think he understood what I was looking for, and just needed a little time to figure out where to put his hooves. He ‘offered’ his front feet a couple of times, but I said no, no and kept touching his left hind with the schooling whip. And, four minutes and forty-five seconds into the lovely ‘sky’ video, you can hear me say “Yessss!! Yesssss!! That’s my boy!”
Delighted, I turned back to the camera, to find it lying flat on its back. Frustrating, but no biggie… I set it up again, propped up against a much larger stone and with a stone in front wedging it in place. Off we went to the pedestal…
Aero stood up on it much quicker the second time around and after a couple of minutes I was back at the camera, ready to stop recording. Only to find that I had completely forgotten to press the record button when I set it up the second time.
Double Aaaaargh.
And worse, now I was out of carrots. But I knew there were a few carrots in a bucket beside the main arena, so I went and stocked up, came back, and finally…
Tada!
That was all we did on the ground today. I’d already ridden him for 45 minutes or so and I was really happy to quit on such a good note.
PS I also introduced Flurry to the pedestal this week.
First reaction was horror – “OH DEAR GOD WHAT IS THAT WEIRD THING BESIDE THE ROUND PEN????”
Second reaction was horror mixed with curiosity – “This is really bizarre, why on earth does she want me to come any closer to it than this?”
Third reaction was – “OHHHHhhhhhh. I get it -” followed by BOOM BOOM as two big hairy front feet were thumped down on the pedestal.
There’s loads more fun to be had with this yet!
amazing…congrats to you and Aero.
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I always thought people were put on a pedestal, someone to admire. Now Aero is up on a pedestal. What about the LSH?
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Well the LSH made the pedestal for ME… draw your own conclusions!
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