Clicker Training Three Baroque Dressage Horses

This is the story of my quest to train my three Dales Ponies for classical dressage, primarily by using Alexandra Kurland's clicker training methods, with a touch of others such as Philippe Karl and Anja Beran thrown in. I turned to clicker training because I had come up against some issues that I didn't know how to fix and because I wanted to inspire them to become enthusiatic partners. Bella and Jack are all my own work and have never been ridden by anyone else.


Bella, Grace and Jack

Bella aged 6

Bella aged 6

Treat Delivery

Jack aged 7

Jack

Wednesday, 28 January 2009

Photos of my Pones Backs.

I emailed my photos to 'Saddlefitter' this evening (poor woman, very cheeky of me to send her photos of all three, but I always feel I have to treat them all equally - as if they'd care that they'd been left out of the photos!!!!!).

Anyway I thought you might be interested to see what my hips have to cope with! I'll just post the most revealing

Grace, a badly sprung settee:



Jack, an overstuffed armchair:



Bella, an overstuffed mattress:



I sent a side view of Grace taken at the show in September, so she looked really smart, but I couldn't find suitable ones of Bella and Jack so had to take these of the muddy, scruffy looking urchins. I need some warm weather to get them clipped right out and bathed!

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4 comments:

  1. Appy2Quarter29 January 2009 at 09:02

    ouch - yep, pretty wide :-) Grace's back doesn't look that bad at all atrophy-wise, I was expecting much worse! You've obviously already done a good job.

    I reckon Tiglet is somewhere between Grace and Jack in summer but because her body is lighterweight, she looks deceiving!

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  2. Helen29 January 2009 at 21:33

    Thanks Charlotte. Grace's back is much better than when I first met her - her spine really stuck out, with huge hollows either side underneath the seat of the saddle. Not sure how much of the 'filling in' is fat though!

    I told 'Saddlefitter', in my email, that Grace was too fat and thought afterwards she'll look at the other 2 and think "what - only Grace?" but Grace has a huge amount of subcutaneous fat which rolls along in front of the clippers when I clip her. Bella and Jack's fat is a bit more 'toned'.

    Bella's back is so flat that all saddle trees seem to have a bit too much curve in them to be ideal. Jack has a tiny bit of shape to his but Bella's you really could eat your dinner off!

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  3. Helen29 January 2009 at 21:37

    OH, I SO WANT TO GET ON WITH TRAINING THEM!!!!

    My lungs are so crap at the moment, I think I'll have to go for the bottle of Pen and Strep and the cattle size needles, before I go mad with frustration!!!!

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  4. Appy2Quarter30 January 2009 at 21:31

    I can really sympathise Helen!!! I am still feeling rubbish, too and I 'had' to do something with Hylo tonight as he wasn't done for me as promised (mumble,mumble) but my heart wasn't truly in it.

    I so want to get back to how we all were a few weeks ago....... Think the pen and strep would help me???

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I am a clicker training addict and there is no cure - thank goodness!!!