Training Begins: Desensitization and Leading

It's been a few days since my first post and December marks the beginning of Azula's training.  So far she's a doll to work with and willingly leads beside me through everything.  She's so careful of where her feet go (unlike her older half brother) and seems to be thinking through everything.  Now she's pretty attached to her half sister that she's been kept with during her weaning process and can get a little testy when she doesn't see her, but we'll work through that.

So the first day of desensitization, I had planned to lead her around the new obstacles, but it ended up being a "OMG EVERYTHING WANTS TO KILL ME" day so I let the two girls get used to having a bunch of stuff laying around in the arena.  The next day I took Azula out by herself and reset up everything with a few changes, but with the same objects, and led her through everything.

She walked over the tarp and stood on it with no problems except for a little spook, but she barely left my side.  Next we went over the ground pole and that's where I learned of how careful she is of putting her feet. She stepped over the ground pole slowly and carefully :3.  Next I set up pylons in a line with a space in between and weaved her through them, to work on flexing.  And let me just tell you, pylons are my friend now for flexing and turning work.  The first time I tried getting her to turn she walked side ways XD.  But with the pylon on one side and me on the other she bent around the pylon.

Now the difficult part was brushing her XD she hates having her legs and belly brushed, and again she will just have to get over the experience since she's mostly white :P.


So that's all for now, I'll keep you all update this month as we progress.

~GRELL~

Meet Azula

If you know me from my other blogs, you'll know that I already have two other horses, Rosie and Apollo.  Well for a while now I've wanted to breed Rosie for my third and final addition to my herd.  Needless to say plans fell through and I decided upon buying a weanling instead of breeding.  It was probably the best decision of my life due to the fact that I really wanted to start showing Rosie in Barrels, but I couldn't with her in foal next year.  So without further ado, I would like to introduce you lovely Internet people to Azula: 

She's about five months of age and you could say I knew her most of her life since she was owned by the barn owner before (Let's just say I've gotten all my horses from the barn owner XD).  Anyways her name used to be Pepsi, but I didn't think it was really feminine, so I changed it to Azula.  There are multiple of reasons why I picked the name, for starters Avatar: The Last Airbender is one of my favourite shows and I couldn't really call her Zuko now could I? :P  Another reason is because the name means Blue in Spanish, but Demon in Hindu.  

She's a very sweet girl who loves to give 'kisses' and have her nose rubbed when she's told she's a good girl.  She knows how to lead and did a phenomenal job at tying for her first time, the same day this picture was taken.  She did decide to bite my head when I was trying to get her cleaned up for pictures for her registration application, but hasn't done so ever since I corrected her.  

She has almost the exact same personality that Apollo, my other APHA gelding, has since they're half siblings (both out of the same daddy).  But she is very vocal XD.

My plans for her is to train her for barrels, just like the other two, and lots of trail riding. :)  

I'll keep this blog up to date as best as I can, at least one post a month, so that you can see her growth and progress.  

~GRELL~