Volunteer Kaya M had been riding Bowie on a regular basis and worked with him in the groundwork sessions of the October Joel Conner Clinic:
Bowie and I participated in the groundwork portion of the clinic and it was a very good experience for both of us! I’m still new to this style of horsemanship, so Bowie was a great partner to help me work on the finer details of groundwork. He is quite responsive and feels of my energy really well in most instances. We worked on reinforcing those moments, like transitioning in a timely manner between gaits and from hindquarters to front quarters. Bowie is pretty handy on his feet, so we didn’t really need to work on freeing up his feet. Instead, I was able to take the time to work on perfecting my cues. Joel corrected my angle when asking for the hindquarter drift and that helped a lot. I also noticed that I struggle to differentiate between asking for the front quarters to move across and backing in an arc, so we did a lot of that! We also worked on a faster response when backing up. Bowie was a little sluggish about this before and I noticed that I was letting him be this way, by not timing my cues and energy effectively. Now we’ve got a speedy back up and can be fancy and effective with groundwork!
