Barn Cleanup

Steph met me out at the barn this week. I brought Cody into the barn to do some ground work with him while Steph ended up raking the manure up that was inside the barn. Cody kept tripping over the frozen horse apples so she thought we better get them out of the way. We worked on the usual lunging and did some trotting over a pole. I also added a second pole but I'm having a hard time getting the spacing right so he can trot over both of them. After some of that ground work Steph showed me how to use her rope bitting rig. She wants some of the therapy horses to be lunged in it so she wanted to show me how to use it properly and what to look for if a horse is planning on flipping himself backward. We started just by walking Cody around so he could get used to it. It didn't seem to faze him so we went onto lunging at the walk and then the trot. We had to open the barn door to help get rid of some of the dust so Cody decided he'd rather pay attention to the open door. After I removed the bitting rig we did some more quick direction changes to get him to start paying attention before backing out of the barn twice. He's getting pretty calm at the backing but we'll keep at it until he's an expert. Next I want to hang a tarp from the rafters to create a narrow space to back him into and out of to simulate a trailer. That should be an interesting undertaking.