Horsemanship Workshop with Josh Foster

I went to a workshop with Josh Foster yesterday. He is the trainer in Palomino Valley who saddle trained Andi for me (and did a FANTASTIC job). I have the utmost respect for Josh and consider him the best trainer AND teacher. Here is his web site: http://www.joshfoster-theequinespartner.com/ There were 10 participants in his workshop, and I rode Whisper while Andi came along to learn to be tied to the trailer all day. Andi was a bit upset at first when I left him, but he soon settled down, drank his water, and ate his hay. He also peed at the trailer. All this might seem mundane to a lot of people, but if you are going to travel with your horse, it is important that they eat, drink, pee, and poo normally away from home.

The workshop started with ground work, then we mounted and flexed and disengaged the hindquarters, and moved the shoulders over. I also learned that I have been doing a one-rein stop ineffectively! I just bring my hand to my hip, but Josh says that allows a horse to move in the direction of his opposite shoulder, and almost everyone has experienced that: a horse still moving with his neck flexed all the way around with his nose at your toe. The correct way has you moving your hand out and up in front on your body. This acts to lock that other shoulder so the horse can not move in that direction. I should say here, that Josh is a mule man, so a lot of his techniques he has adapted for the smarter, more sensitive mule. After we learned to move the shoulders and the hindquarters properly, we played some games that put those moves into use. Josh had a barrel set up with sacks in a bucket that we were to go up to and pick up. Sounds easier that it is!! Here are some pics from that exercise:

We also rode side by side with another horse with a piece of Police Caution Tape between us. Josh handed out the strips of tape for us to allow our horses to get used to it, and one horse freaked out and bucked the owner off. So when I got my tape, I clicked Whisper for looking at it. Since we have played touch the goblin games before, Whisper was familiar with this game, so looked at the strange, flapping in the breeze tape, as a way to get the vending machine to work! I have to admit, tho, I hid the fact that I was incorporating clicker training from Josh, as he is not a clicker trainer and it was HIS workshop, so I tried to respect that (and at the same time, use the clicker where I thought it appropriate for my horse).

It was a fun and successful day, for both Andi and Whisper, and they had their trailer ride home in the dark, which was probably more scarey for me than for them! We got home at 7pm where we were greeted by loud winneys and a huge heehaw from the herd since dinner was late!