In Australia, they say "horse riding", not "horseback riding". Somehow it makes a lot of sense but has sounded very weird for a long time.
Anyway, this past weekend I got to ride one of Pauleen's horses! His name is Aurum (I'm actually not sure how it's spelled - maybe Oram?) and he's a beautiful teenage Palomino. I originally went over to Pauleen's place on Sunday to meet her friend Cheryl, who wanted to see the discrimination training we've been doing with Pauleen's Lagottos. We spent a little time demonstrating the training and convinced Cheryl that she wants to be one of our study participants and train her super smart dog Gilbert. In the afternoon, we had some free time and decided that I should spend some time doing round pen work with Aurum to start building a relationship before I ever got on him. He's the absolute sweetest old man and apparently has been showed and used do a lot with his previous owner but hasn't been ridden hardly at all for the last three years (twice, actually, including yesterday). I got to feel like a fool round penning him and trying to figure out how to get him to turn away from the fence towards me to change direction, then getting him to yield his front and rear, and flexing his neck (which we called the half-tap position at Mustang Camp). He was super patient and was absolutely wonderful, even though I was giving all sorts of terrible mixed signals. (we ended up watching the Clinton Anderson DVD on round penning that evening so I'm more hopeful about next time!)
After a good session of ground work, Pauleen went and got the saddle and we did the same thing again, with his saddle on. Shortly after, she said "do you want to ride him today?" - um YES? We just did some walking and trotting around the round yard and I got to try and feel where his front feet were so I could go up on the outside leg - which was easy one way around but really hard the other way! We'll get there though. Pauleen says she's happy to teach me and I'm so excited to get real lessons and finally learn to ride!
I feel like the luckiest person ever. I've come to Australia, been given a puppy to play with, a horse to ride, and someone is paying me to be here! Of course
real work is still happening...just mostly late at night when the world is quiet :)
