Sunday, March 8, 2015

Play Ball!


It's not all work and no play here at Blue Fountain Farm - River needs to find her inner playful nature as well as do her homework.   A lot of her young life has been too serious - after all, survival is a serious business.  However, that part of her life is over, and it's on to fun and adventure now.

The big, bouncy ball is a great tool to teach horses to accept things, to have fun, and to trust that I won't hand out more than she can take.  I wondered what her reaction to it would be, but............it was totally anti-climactic!

River is so very accepting of whatever we hand out to her - I love it!  These first two images are of her seeing the ball in the round pen for the first time.









Then Jessi and Sombra came in to help...............






Here's a little video of what transpired..............


Sombra and Jessi became so adept a handling the ball, they were able to push it right out of the round pen in to the big arena - with River following close behind.





The great thing about Sombra and River being so close together is that River got to see a human on horseback from up close and personal.  We will be ponying her around soon, and having her get  used to us being up on another horses' back will help for when we get up on her.  She learns that she can get love and petting from up high as well as on the ground.

  











Speaking of petting, this is River's "scritch" face - I was scratching her with one hand, and taking a photo of her with the other.  As usual, this is her reward for being a good girl.




If you remember, this episode in River's Journey happened a couple of days ago.  Wait until you see what she was up to yesterday, after we returned from the Cowboy Dressage Show.  But........that's for the next post.


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