Him (Neville's Training Process)

The training process for us both has been...well, tough. Neville used to get so frustrated when I picked out his hooves and now he doesn't really care, as long as I don't accidentally touch his frog.

Neville has learned a lot over the past couple months. I've taught him to cross-jump and taught him some signals to stop, look up, turn and come here. When I hold out my hand, he sees that I don't have anything that he thinks could hurt him and he comes to me. When I hold both of my hands up with my index fingers sticking up, he knows to look up.

We've been working on liberty training and it's been fun. Neville doesn't see it as work, he sees it more as a game than anything. I have been trying to get Neville to cross-jump with liberty, but as much as he hates cross-jumping without his lead rope.

I have been slowly working on him doing liberty without his halter. And for the first time last Wednesday, we tried it and it worked! Neville loved it and he didn't stop to roll at all.

He's getting better at not scratching all the time. I just give him his "look up" signal, he knows it's time for work.

Last Wednesday, I worked on him getting used to reins for when we work on harness and cart. He was confused because I was standing beside his ribs and not beside his shoulders. But I pushed his withers forward and he seemed to get the signal to move forward. We worked on this for a good forty-five minutes at a walk, then onto a trot.

There's one thing he does not like: The lunge whip. I was getting ready to lunge him a few Wednesdays ago and I already had the lunge line on him. I reached for the whip and he saw it and took off through the arena. He ran as fast as his little legs could carry him and I though I'd never catch him. I darted after him, diving to catch the lunge line and get him to me. The thing was, I couldn't catch it. I dove two more times and I still couldn't get the rope in my hands. Finally, I caught it and I pulled Neville to me.

I really didn't want him to dart and just keep running until he was too tired, because he had work to do. I lunged him the right way, just to tell him he can't run just because I have the whip that makes "scary" noises. After a few minutes we took a break and cooled down by walking around the arena.

But he's been doing better since the lunge line incident. I try to show him that the whips won't hurt him before I use them with training.