8th October 2008

"He does line himself up beautifully for the mounting block now though. "

is he doing that just because of the click/treat once you set off, or if not, how did you do that? cheers!

I trained him to stand by it. He's always had a thing about moving away from mounting blocks, and especially when trying to get on bareback, I could do without the leap of death!

We have two breeze blocks (one on top of other) to mount from. I lead him so that the breezeblocks go between us, then halt him so that my stirrup is aligned with the blocks. If he takes too many or not enough steps forward, I ask for the slight movement needed and then click/treat when he is in place. The routine of it definitely helps.

If he stops too far away width wise I simply circle him and try again, although I've only had to do that once. He doesn't know how to side pass and I think trying to move shoulders then haunches across would over complicate things.

I guess I could break it down further if he needed me to, but he's pretty good at standing for mounting here anyway, slightly worse without a saddle but doable. What I'd like to add in at some stage is him not walking off as soon as I'm on/halfway on board, but given the forward problems at the moment I'm ignoring that for now and will correct it later.