Weaving the barrels / obstacles is fun to do with your horse. You can evaluate how they
move, work on suppleness, check to see if they're paying attention, how quickly they respond, etc.
Charm, an Icelandic Horse filly, is only three years old, and very curious. She's allowed to
look in the barrels, smell them, and check them out to satisfy her curiosity. That is her default behavior
rather than spooking or being nervous about something. We don't want to destroy her curiosity. She's a young
horse, no need to rush things or look for perfection.
I am still recovering from a broken leg, and weaning slowly off of the leg brace; still stiff and lacking full
range of motion, but working on it.
Here we have obtained some new toys: the traffic tubes / cones. Charm is weaving the cones wearing a bareback pad (not girthed, so that when it falls, she has an opportunity to learn not to worry about it).
Originally when we started with the cones at the beginning of the session, Charm was not wearing the pad. The cones
were a little too close together. We spread them apart which enabled her to move more freely around them.
The bareback pad has stirrups which would occasionally bang against the tube cones. This
is good practice for her to get used to things like that, which she may encounter with a rider.
