Day 4

Today was a good day. :) Rosie was really great to catch this morning but unloaded at La Cense rather tense. She was jumpy for about 20 minutes this morning and bothered by all the commotion. You really wouldn't notice that by comparing her to some of the other horses who were freaking out but for Rosie, who is normally is calm, today she was just a bit more spooky to start out with than normal. To help break this pattern and bring her back down to a more manageable state of mind I decided to send her between me and the fence, disengage her, have her stand/wait, then resend. So it was just 180 degree direction changes. I did this until she could pass between me and the fence without trotting frantically through and showed some signs of relaxing. I also did the falling leaf pattern by sending her out on a half circle, pushing her hind end away and bringing her front end back through to change direction - then at the half circle point did it all over so she kept gently changing directions back and forth like a falling leaf. :) I really like this exercise because it builds respect by controlling their feet and driving them away from you and it helps engage the mind with changes of direction and gait (walk, stop-turn, walk, stop-turn, etc). After a bit of this she settled right down. We also did sideways down the fence for the first time ever and she was great! She's never done really any ground work before, very little flagging and that's it, so this was really impressive that she put it all together and had such a straight sideways down the rail.

Eric had me saddle her up right at the beginning of class. She stood really quietly for this and was easy to tack up. I then played a little desensitizing with my stick and string, got her feet moving a bit to make sure there weren't any hidden braces (physical or mental) and then tied my string to my stirrup. I began flapping the stirrup which caused her to become tense and start walking around. Because my body remained in neutral, I hadn't asked her to move, she had done it on her own either our of discomfort or assumption, I kept swinging the stirrup while she walked. It was obvious she was nervous so I just let her walk as much as she needed to to gain confidence and every time she thought about slowing down and stopping I began slowing my rhythm with the stirrup. As soon as she stopped, I stopped. After allowing her some process time I began the swinging and flopping again. She started walking so I repeated the same thing I did before. It took about 4 tries before she realized that I wasn't asking her to go, it wasn't hurting her, and that the only right answer was to stop moving her feet and look at me. I did the other side and she picked it up in about half the time. I didn't do a lot of vigorous flapping (I'll do that tomorrow) because I wanted to end on a good note and keep it simple.

We took a break and then moved onto the barrels. I set them out one against the fence, a 2 foot gap, then the other barrel. I sent her between the two barrels a handful of times until she was relaxed with her head down and eyes soft and then narrowed the gap. I did this until the barrels were touching. The first time I sent her at it she got one leg over, changed her mind, and backed up. I don't ever want to make her feel wrong and it's all about building confidence, so when that happens I gladly accept that I did get part of the horse over and simply back her up and resend. The second send she walked over, kind of hopping her back legs over and landed in a trot. I really want for her to maintain gait over the barrels (especially the white ones since they're small), I don't want her trotting out of the jump if I sent her in at a walk because right now it's teaching her to rush forward and think away from the jump rather than back to me. I did the same pattern as when I sent her between me and the fence with the 180 degree line. Send, jump, disengage/face, wait, then bring back. This little jumping exercise caused a lot of emotion in her. She had a hard time maintaining a walk and then disengaging at the end. It's really important because I want to keep her mind coming back to me and not just have a fruitloop on the end of a rope running around and leaping the barrels. So we just kept doing this until she could calmly go over a couple times in a row. After that I gave her a good break since it was a hard exercise for her emotionally.

Our final thing that we worked on today was transitions in the round pen. Not only do they help a horse think but I want to be able to ride her through her gaits without her running into them - that will be uncomfortable for me and I really am not very confident with the idea of getting her flagged into the canter. I'm still working on my confidence and I want to keep everything as smooth as possible. I turned her loose in the round pen and asked her to trot around, then disengage, and come in. She's never done liberty work so I figured this would just test out the waters to see what we had. I was SO impressed! She not only did all of the above but had such great draw!! She came trotting into me! I backed her up (all at liberty) on a straight line and resent. I asked for a change of direction by stepping back and out toward the rail ahead of her and inviting her in, then stepping toward her and resending the other direction - she did that too! What a clever horse! She even followed me around, stopping and going with me, after coming into the center. :) For the canter transitions I had a long phase one by making a kissing noise until I ran out of breath than slapped my string behind me, to the side of me, and finally tagging where she was (not aiming for her). If she could get out of that spot in time by cantering than there was no contact. I did have to tag her the first time and she took off cantering. Because of her LBI nature I knew she wouldn't choose to maintain that gait so after allowing her about 1/4 of a lap and before she broke gait I asked her to disengage and come to me. After about 4 sends I could get her cantering by pointing in the direction of travel and smooching. Big improvement from yesterday when Eric had to chase her into the canter. To be fair, he was on a 12' line and that's hard to get an introverted type horse to canter on a small circle like that. I couldn't believe how quickly she picked it all up and how much draw she had. She was totally awesome at all the liberty stuff. I can't wait to expand on that!