Well, I think we are officially going to try something new this year. We keep going back and forth and back and forth, but we need to get another of our Berry Sweet babies in the show pen. We finally have one that we retained so... how about a little lunge line? Sophie really stepped out of her comfort zone last year and learned some new skills. She was our first to show consistently in the in hand classes. Seeing how nervous she was before every lungeline go did not exactly instill confidence in me.
Why would lungeline make a person so nervous? Well let's see, you're taking a baby horsie and sending it out there, 20+ feet away, and expecting it to do what you ask, when you ask it all within a minute and a half. Oh and the only real "tools" you have are the lungeline (20+ feet of it) and a whip that you aren't actually allowed to touch them with or even make noise with and your words/body language. Did I mention that they are baby horsies with the attention span of literally a gnat? Do you understand how much baby horsies love to play? Oh and did I mention that they quickly learn how little you can and are going to do during said class when they are way out there at the end of the lungeline? I know I did forget one thing. Unlike some of the other classes, no others horses are competing at the same time so everyone that is watching the class is watching YOU and only you.
Yeah.
Super fun.
In the lungeline class, IF all goes well and your baby horsie doesn't get distracted by the other ponies waiting their turn, the judges in their chairs, the toddler in the stroller, the dog walking along the rail, the person who sneezed or any of the million other distractions along the rail, you have a minute in a half to go both directions at all 3 gaits; walk, trot, lope. You do not have a stop watch on you. You have to rely on an internal timer to tell you approximately how long to do each gait before you must stop, turn and get Precious going the other direction. You do have the announcer to tell you when you have reached the halfway point. Here's hoping you are ready to turn at that point and that Precious is ready to listen. You then have to turn Precious out there, 20+ feet away, and switch your whip and line to opposite hands, without tangling them up together and get Precious going the other direction.
I've done lungeline class one time. At an open show. It was terrifying. I won the class (still not sure how to this day), but it didn't make me want to do it over and over again. As you can see from the picture I did not have Cutie anywhere near out there on the end of the line. In my defense I had literally taught her to LEAD just a few days before the show, so...
All that said, I do feel like the more opportunities we can take to get our babies in the show pen, the better they will be in the long run. I know last year did amazing things for Reba. She has been a much easier 2 year old to start under saddle thanks to her work on in hand trail and lungeline. So someone is going to be putting Sundae on the end of a lungeline this season for a couple of shows. Nothing dramatic, I don't want her lunged into the ground. I've seen what that does to their minds and their joints. NO thank you. But a few shows here or there, a few classes and a few goes will be good for her. If I can't talk Sophie into it, maybe Tim needs to try his hand at the in hand classes?
Compared to lungeline, in hand trail seems like fun. Oh sure, there are a lot of things that can go wrong in an in hand trail pattern. But at least they are right next to you, you have the ability to communicate with them at a much more intimate level and reprimand them if needed. I guess there is always the possibility of tripping over the obstacles, I'm sure I can manage to do that a few times.... Huh - sounds like another fun class for Tim to show in this year. He's practically a pro after that one time he took Nugget in the class 2 years ago, right?
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