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!
