Laws of Attraction and Repulsion as Applied to Horses

ORI: Blu, 2 hours, 10-12-10

I went to the back pasture to get the horses up. Blu was quite focused on his meal. Ginger left. I played delicate game to catch Blu. Once he began to move, I began to head up. In this manner, Blu began to follow me. He became more stuck to me until I could stop and he stopped with me. That was learned through simple trial and error.

I have created a rough (very rough-NOT TO SCALE) diagram of the position of the horses. Connor was not moving, at first, but just his presence exerts force on all the horses. That is shown by the "energy" arrow coming from him. Pink dots represent repulsion energy. Red dots represent attractive forces. You can see that Connor was exuding repulsive forces in all directions. Ginger, as she leaves Blu, leaves an attractive force in her wake. However, when I turn to leave, I also leave an attractive force that has a greater draw on Blu. The black lines are the actual paths of motion. The purple is me. Oh, and that black box around Hoosier means that he is unaffected by all forces. Tee hee.

I put the halter and 12 foot line on him and rubbed him before getting on. Blu has been biting me when I go to get on sometimes. I keep forgetting to bring a cookie out to give him when his head swings around. Tonight, I just swung the rope around me. That worked fine, but I don't prefer this method for now.

Riding up wiht one rein was a little klutzy with the fast rope changes from one side to the other. Blu was a bit excited and therefore taking a while to be reached mentally. After working the gate, though, he finally licked and chewed and became attentive. However, he got exited again when we began to sort the horses into the correct pastures. This is where Misty surpasses Blu. He becomes focused on one horse and just chasing the horse. Misty is ready to do whatever I ask--chase, creep, sidepass away or to, stop, change horses, bite, etc. Interesting she is more and more seeming to be an RVI with a little LBI instead of the other way around.

I cantered Blu to a cone in the middle of the pasture and stopped at it. I let Blu snort and shake his head. He was still alert, and this is when I made the decision that I should play on the 23' line instead of with the 12' line around his neck as I did the last time. So, I walked with him to the fence and grabbed the stuff I needed. On the way back to the open area, I played the friendly game with him, gently throwing the savvy string over him.

Blu left before being sent. I let him complete a circle then brought him back in to rest. He licked and chewed and went away properly. I worked up to the trot then canter and played with backing up while I was in neutral. It is still a baby concept, but he did do one good, well, actually it was great, thing; he began to back up in a curve on the circle. We got six steps (very slow, mind you) at the longest one. I did stop him at the same spot each time to back him up.

I mounted by standing on a barrel. Blu did not get into place by himself, but he was not difficult or having reservations as I gently put him in place--no head tossing. Right after mounting, I did friendly game with the jump rope. He was fine with it.

Our jump roping session went great. We walked, trotted, cantered, and also did backward jump roping. The only difficulty with jump roping backward is that Blu drags his feet back, so it takes forever for him to actually get the string out from under him. I think I will leave that feat alone since it is designed to fail. Or maybe it will just be saved for if and when Blu steps back instead of sliding back.

I ended up going totally bridleless because Blu was so relaxed and the line was just getting in the way. It was quite the contrast to the horse I started with. We ended when he did an entire precise-figure-of-eight with simple lead changes.

Natural Horsewoman Out.