Tails From Provence

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!