Monday 8th December

Today I started with playing with Smarty. All seven games are getting really good now, it is hard to believe he has only been doing this for over a week. I would now say all his games are at least at a level one standard, except sideways as we still need to do a little more work on this game.

We then played again with getting him more connected to my energy levels in preparation for riding again. He was much better today and seemed a lot more focused on me and my energy.

I then mounted and rode bareback, and started with just walking round and asking him to stand and then asking him for back up. Again today he didn’t understand what I was asking when I applied pressure so instead of getting into a fight I got a CS and played lots of friendly with this and then when I asked for back up again I would apply the pressure on the halter and then added in rhythmic pressure on his chest with the CS and this helped him and he managed to back for a couple of steps. So we carried on working on this and by the end we were able to trot, walk, stand and then back up, he was really connected to my energy and I only had to apply pressure to ask for the back up and only a little pressure from the CS so I was really happy with this!! So I will continue to work on this every time I ride him as imagine what a good games pony I am going to have if I can have him to go and woa of only my own energy!!

We were all in the canteen having a warm drink and Julie had a question for Eddy to do with Shoulder in. So Eddy then gave us a really good chat on this and also drew some diagrams on the board to help us understand the movement and also were our bodys should be and also where the most of the horses weight will be - So that was really interesting to hear about.

The other lady also had some questions about how her horse behaved on the trail yesterday, he is a lazy left brain horse. And it was interesting to hear what Eddy said about him.. It is good to hear about problems and questions to do with these types of horses as I learn a lot from this.

I then went out to play with Blossom and things just went from bad to worse!! Everything I would ask her to do she would do the opposite, so in the end I just sat on the jump and spent some undemanding time with her as I didn’t know what else to do, I had totally run out of Savvy arrows!!

Marieke then commented that it was very cold day to spend undemanding time with her, and as I explained to her Blossom was a nightmare today and I didn’t know what else to do so this was all I knew what to do..
Eddy then came and helped me and we worked on backwards, but it was a challenge as she didn’t want to go backwards and was doing everything she could to avoid going back. So instead of disengaging the HQ I was to work on moving zone one. But using the rope to move zone1 and using the CS on her chest at phase 4 most of the time to get her to go back was hard work! The plan was as soon as she took a few steps backwards nicely without fighting or if she gave me a nice look I would stop. But this didn’t work!! Blossom had different ideas and in the end was leaping and bucking and trying to run. So I ended up just leaving it for the day as if I carried in any longer we would have just ended up having a fight and my guess is she would have won. Hopefully tomorrow will be a better day!