Zena's Training

She is  beauty, and if the training is done right the first time horses do not forget, i think they know and remember a lot more than we give them credit for. are you getting her ready for next summer show season?   

Sounds like fun and i am sure he will love her. 

It looks like Zena was proud of herself and posing for her pictures.



Nice!  blue ribbon

No, Horselady, not yet.  Friday was the first day the trainer felt like Zena was ready for me to start riding her (under the trainer's supervision), but I have many more years of experience riding than my husband does.  She wants to wait a bit longer before she puts my husband on her for the first time, and that will be under her supervision as well.  Zena doesn't even have 10 rides on her yet (this time around, anyway), so the trainer wants to make sure that when she puts my husband on her, it will be a good experience for him and for Zena.  Zena has come so far and is doing so well with this trainer, and we want to make sure everything continues to go well for all involved. 

Trust me, when my husband finally gets to ride her, there will definitely be pictures! 

Today was Zena's 28th training session, and the trainer put the 11th ride on her. Today was really cold (only around 45ºF) and really windy. Brrr! Today was a "wear lots of layers" kind of day!

Sis is definitely feeling much better today, because while the trainer was riding Zena in the pasture, Sis suddenly decided to tear around them, bucking, kicking, head-tossing, and just trying to be a turd. The trainer said she could feel Zena trembling and knew she wanted to take off and play with Sis, but she was able to keep Zena focused and under control, so it was a very good test for Zena, and kudos to the trainer! 

Once the trainer finished riding Zena in the pasture, she brought her back into the round pen and I got to have my 2nd ride on Zena. Yay! It's amazing to me how light Zena is already!  (Today I was prepared to ride, brought my helmet with me, and wore my riding boots.  That was so much more comfortable than riding in my muck boots!  )

The trainer taught Zena and I something new today... she taught Zena a cue for getting her to drop her head and tip her nose in a bit to get better collected, and she taught me how to give her the cue. While the trainer was teaching the cue to Zena I got to watch Zena's face as she tried to figure out the right answer. It was pretty comical, but once she got it figured out, she did great with it, and she did great with it for me, too.

Here are a couple pictures of me and Zena today.

Good for you and Zena! She look very relaxed in all of the pictures. I can't see your thread about her on HT because I got banned until December. So I can only see it here and I'm glad you posted about it! 

Friday's training session was another really fun one for me.  I had my 3rd ride on Zena, and the trainer taught me another new thing... how to get Zena to yield her hindquarters and pivot on the forehand while I'm in the saddle.    I've never known how people did that before, and it took a bit for me to get the hang of it, but by the end of the session I had Zena pivoting and yielding like a pro.  It was so cool!!

Zena has always been great about backing easily from the ground, but she was never very good at backing with a rider.  She would be stubborn and fight it and toss her nose straight up in the air, but not anymore!  The trainer backed her all the way across the round pen and she did it willingly and with her head down.  She was a little more stubborn for me, so I had to ask a little more firmly than the trainer did, but she backed and had her head down.  I know it's just going to take time and practice and before long she'll be backing as willingly for me as she does for the trainer, but for now I'm just thrilled that she's keeping her head down and backing!

Lately Sis has apparently decided it would be fun to run around Zena flagging her tail, bucking and playing while the trainer tries to ride Zena in the pasture and keep her at a walk , but Friday she behaved much better.  It was cute, though, when the trainer was riding Zena up the hill at a trot, they trotted past where Sis was grazing, and Sis started trotting alongside them for a bit.

I love photography, so I take tons of pictures during each of Zena's Friday training sessions and the trainer has even used some of them on her Facebook business page (with my permission), but I can't take pictures of myself when I'm riding, so I'm glad that this trainer has been such a doll and has happily taken my camera when it's my turn to ride so she can take lots of pictures of me riding Zena.    Here are some pictures from Friday's training session.

Here is the trainer trotting Zena in the pasture, with Sis trotting alongside them.


Me backing Zena


The trainer thought this would make a cute picture because my face was framed between Zena's ears, but of course Zena decided to put her ears back when the trainer snapped the picture.  lol  Oh well, it's still a nice picture. 

Yay for hubby! You both look great up there on Zena and she looks great!

Thanks for the nice comments, ladies. 

Horselady, Zena rides in a side-pull.  She's never been taught to accept a bit (we learned that lesson the hard way when we tried riding her with a bridle and simple snaffle bit one time while we were trying her out before we bought her).  My plan had been to have this trainer get her going under saddle again using the side-pull to start with, but to eventually train her to ride with a bit, but at this point she is doing so well and is so soft in the side-pull that now I'm leaning towards "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". 

I agree with you, hubby needs his stirrups brought up a notch.  I kind of thought the trainer might adjust the stirrups for him today, but for some reason she didn't.  It probably just got overlooked since we were trying to squeeze so much into today's 1 hour training session.