Take a Seat

Posted at May 25, 2010 // Tricks

We’re now less than a month away from the first appearance of the summer for Painting Pony. This year our first appearance will be in New Jersey, at the site of the Mounted Games Across America National Competition. This is a new venue for us, and I’ve been racking my brain for a new performance idea, or some new tricks. I finally decided that we just need some more “wow” tricks. To me this means some funny/goofy tricks, and some amazing tricks.

So trick number one involves the magnificent Boomerang! Boomer will be attending this competition as my designated mount, while Minnow will be attending solely as a performer. Since its rare that I bring two trick ponies along with me to a performance, I decided to utilize this rarity by teaching Boomer something “amazing”.

See Minnow’s specialty is manipulating objects around him. He will pick up anything I hand him, and can easily figure out what to “do with it”. His weakness is putting himself into vulnerable positions. I attribute this to his wild island pony background, as well has his brief stint in a home that neglected him. And although I have been working with him for the past 7 years, he still feels too vulnerable to let me near him when he lays down. So for my next planned trick, Boomer was the obvious choice.

For I decided to teach him to sit.

In the past two weeks I have been working on moving Boomer from the ground. We’ve worked on his backup, his spin on the haunches, and spin on the forehand. With each day, Boomer is becoming progressively lighter in all directions. So on Monday I decided to lug out a bale of straw to see if I could get him to learn the beginnings of putting some of his weight on it.

Boomer is a pretty trusting pony, having had no major life traumas and the fact that he was “home raised” in a loving environment. He’s pretty willing to try anything, and if it involves food he’ll definitely try it. Within a minute of asking Boomer to back his hind end into the straw bale it was evident that he was going to take to sitting pretty quickly. After about the third try I had him resting a good bit of his weight on his hocks, which were leaning on the haybale – and I had him holding it!

Had I moved the bales away from the fence line I probably could have had him “sitting” on them too! But I decided to save the next step for another day.

Boomer was pretty proud of himself and his new trick. As I stepped back to snap a few photos of him he just kept trying to sit deeper and deeper onto the bale (of course I was sure to keep clicking a rewarding each effort he gave). I can’t wait to drag the haybales out tomorrow for another session with him…this time I have a few bean bag chairs too!