Work in the barn

I haven't been in the mood to get the horses all tacked up and work in the snow so I've been using Cody as my excuse to not ride. It's a good excuse though, he needs the ground work. I actually got to the barn really early for once so I groomed Axel for while before bringing in Cody. My first step from now on is going to be driving him into the barn. Going in the first time isn't usually a big deal, he walks right in when I put the rope over his back and send him on his way. After that, I figured I'd start with seeing how his attitude about being in the barn without his herd. He was surprisingly calm. Still a bit anxious but manageable. We did a little basic lunging and some grooming as a reward. If we only trot once or twice around in a row it doesn't get too dusty in there but I think I'll shovel some snow in there next time it's not so crunchy. We spent a little time working on standing still which is another one of our issues. Tricia and Steph had arrived by that point. Tricia ended up jumping on Cody bareback and I lunged him. He was a little concerned with the change at first but figured it out pretty quick. So we set up a board on the ground to practice backing over. And I set up some chairs in the corner of the barn to practice lunging (and eventually driving) into small spaces. He got the lunging into the corner pretty well after a while. The backing up still needs a lot of work. He will back out of the trailer but it's usually pretty fast and frantic. He'll back on the ground but it's pretty hard to keep him in a straight line. But we'll keep working on that. I think the more confident he gets with backing on command the easier it will be to keep him straight. At the end of the lesson we backed him out of the barn door. There's a pretty decent step down so I thought it'd be a good practice spot for trailering. He was much more concerned with what was behind him while I was aiming him towards the door than he was just in the barn. He finally made it out of the barn but Tricia insisted he go back in and do it again. This time driving him into the door was much more difficult. It required some more circles so he would remember we weren't done work yet. Finally he did go in. Backing out the second time wasn't quite as difficult but still not perfect. I'll have to add a whoa in this game when he gets the back feet out so he learns not to fly backwards. After that it was the usual dinner time and off to the bar!