![Lily trotting](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.stardel.com\/fiveacres\/image\/lilytrot20050227.jpg?w=660\")
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Last week, I decided it was time to start working with Lily to get her legged up a bit, before I put her back to work under saddle. We’ve had a round pen to the east of the house for years, but I have rarely used it except for temporarily confining a horse where I could see it from the house. It seems almost odd to be using it for its traditional purpose.<\/p>\n
I don’t want her to run around like an idiot in the round pen (and possibly reinjure herself) so I am using clicker training to reward her for trotting forward in a sensible manner. Since she likes to trot with her nose four inches off the ground, I click her (and give her a treat) when she carries her head with her poll slightly above her withers, as in this photo I took yesterday. (For the non-horsey set, the poll is the spot between the ears, and forward means energetic without rushing.) Eventually, I will only reward her when she lifts her forehand a bit more, and takes more weight on her hindquarters, but right now my reward criteria are sensible, forward, and poll above the withers.<\/p>\n
She doesn’t seem at all upset that her nine month long convalescence is over.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Last week, I decided it was time to start working with Lily to get her legged up a bit, before I put her back to work under saddle. We’ve had a round pen to the east of the house for years, but I have rarely used it except for temporarily confining a horse where I … Continue reading Lily<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":4,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1039","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-horses","category-photos"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4Npw-gL","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stardel.com\/fiveacres\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1039","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stardel.com\/fiveacres\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stardel.com\/fiveacres\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stardel.com\/fiveacres\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stardel.com\/fiveacres\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1039"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.stardel.com\/fiveacres\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1039\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stardel.com\/fiveacres\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1039"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stardel.com\/fiveacres\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1039"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stardel.com\/fiveacres\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1039"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}