Bridge has been working with Stanley on Working Equitation (WE) for almost a year. WE is a discipline that combines some dressage technique with ease of handling obstacles that simulate what a working ranch/cattle horse/rider combination might encounter. She has quite a bit of fun and some frustrations as they both learn and get used to each other.
Stanley in particular seems to want to be “retired” and has some anxiety issues. Working with him this last year he lost weight and we had to try a number of different feed combinations to get him back on track.
Overall for 2018 he took a few ribbons and was the Grand Champion for the Thoroughbred Incentive Program.
Sky has continued his light retirement and has bonded almost too well with his new herd mates (he gets agitated when one of them is gone). Bridge did show him in WE at the June show and he did ok. He is of course a big clumsy draft horse. It was an experiment to see how well he would do. Most of his issues were related to separation anxiety and overly curious about the obstacles.
Rivan is our beat up horse. He is the herd nerd and gets picked on by the other two – he is definitely not an Alpha. Bridge hasn’t worked much with him and he needs some serious training. She is focusing her efforts on him the next couple of months and if he does well she may start some WE training.
