August 30, 2010

Carriage Rides, Leila and Saturday Afternoon











A busy weekend, again. Friday had us on a particularly long job in Pomfret, at the Sharp Hill Winery for an anniversary ride. (Sharp Hill is actually a stunning place, and the food and wine comes very highly recommended!) Saturday was spent working with Leila, working Danny, and preparing for the Woodstock Draft Horse Show on Sunday. (More on Sunday's horse show in a future post).

Leila is coming along beautifully. She is learning how to trust and go where we ask her. She is experiencing being away from mom, and enjoying it. Saturday's lessons included "hill climbing", and seeing new horizons without momma there. The importance of this kind of training is to prepare the horse for trusting it's handler in all sorts of situations and in all landscapes, with or without another horse present - of the utmost importance to the working or commercial horse. Soon, we will harness Dolly and tie Leila to the collar, and teach Leila to "work" in a team.

Photos: Top: The facility at Sharp Hill Winery is just stunning.
Second Photo: Leila rushing down a dirt pile (the bottom picture shows her standing at the top).
Third Photo: Friend Linda's Percheron, Cyrus (once ours!) stands at the hitching rail next to Danny after a nice afternoon of cart rides.

1 comment:

  1. What lovely images. The horses and place look beautiful.

    And isn't Leila getting big! The amount of work that goes into training a horse must be tremendous. But well worth the results for a gentle animal.

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