We are on our way to FL, FINALLY! I picked up Jana in VA on Tuesday morning and we started our journey with Georgie in the back riding high on top of all my crap:) We drove to Savannah, GA and met up with one of Jana’s good friends, Ben, for a very entertaining night out. We stayed the night, got our traditional Waffle House breakfast, then hit the road for the second half of our trek. While Jana does some driving I thought I would try and catch up on some blogging stories…
Some of you may already know about Gemini, Gem Twist’s clone, but for those of you who don’t, google Gemini or Gem Twist clone and you will find a couple very interesting articles on Gem and the cloning process. Gemini had been living at the breeding farm down the road from Chado since my good friend Jimmy helped break him last year. He returned to Chado in October and I was lucky enough to get the ride. It was an amazing experience to work with the clone of such a famous horse as well as have Frank Chapot giving me bits of advice as we progressed with his training.
We started him on the lunge with the help of Steve Bostwick on the ground. We got him moving forward to our cluck before we even got on him. He was very well behaved to start, every now and then would sulk back but with a cluck he usually moved right on. We tried to use the whip sparingly since he would tend to suck back and get angry when he got spanked. He was walk, trot, cantering by the second ride. Frank had me start doing big figure eights over a pole in the center of the ring, first at the trot, then the canter. He had me ask for the change over the pole and tap him with the whip on the outside after the pole if he missed the change. Gemini was ALWAYS brave and very smart with everything we did. He got the changes almost every time and if he missed it and I tapped him, he almost always swapped… Sometimes with a small kick out just for fun:)
After we established some good steering and flying changes over the pole, Frank added a small jump on the wall in either direction about 4 strides from the pole in the center. We would canter the pole and canter 4 strides to the tiny jump, around to the pole, new direction, 4 strides to the other small jump, then continue around and do the whole figure of eight again. We continued around the exercise until he seemed confident with the pattern and landing on his leads, then changed the pole out for another small jump. Gemini never batted an eye. He really seemed to like jumping. By the end of our time together we jumped everything in the ring and even a small water jump outside. Of course we kept everything very small but I don’t think height will be much of an issue for him…
The last month or so of training really was just flatting, working on moving forward off my leg without throwing a fit first, and some big figure of eight exercises over one small wall in the center. By the end he rode the same even with other horses (mares included) in the ring and was always a gentleman walking in and out to the paddock and to be tacked up. As he became bored with work he started trying new tricks and Got rather stubborn about going forward at times but Frank and I always prevailed and ended on a good note. He went back to the breeding farm where he will spend the winter. We are all very excited to see how a little time to mature affects him. See you in the Spring, Gemini!
yay gemini:)
Thanks for this post! I was just compulsively searching the internet for news on this youngster a couple of days ago, and lo and behold . . . here’s an update! He’s really caught my interest, since Gem Twist was a childhood hero to me.