Sunday 7th December

Today I made us all a full Scottish breakfast, it was really nice and everyone enjoyed it!!

I played with Smarty first today as later on I was going to be taking Bossom on a trail ride. We started with friendly with the CS and again today he was really good. Porcupine the FQ and zone one is really good at phase one, but the HQ requires a little higher higher phase.

Driving game was good, what is very interesting is he yeilds his HQ better than his FQ better in this game… Totally opposite from the porcupine game!

Yo yo game was good, he can now back up from phase 1 to aout 9ft away from me then he stops and seems to loose his confidence a little so I am giving him lots of rest and friendly until he seems confident and then I ask him back to me. I don’t want to push him out to the end of the 12ft line, as I want to give him the time he needs so he becomes more confident.

Circling game was good today I am able to ask him to walk and trot and he can then disengage really well, today we also played with circling over the tarp. To start with he had to canter over this but after a few laps he was soon able to trot quite calmly over it so I left it at that for today.

Squeeze game was very good today we started with playing with this against the wall to start with just him confident with the game. We then moved on to playing with squeeze over a jump, so I was really happy with this.

Sideways today was good, he isn’t briliant at this game yet. He still tends to pull and go foreward or turn and face me - so we are working slowly with this game to try and help him understand what I am asking and help him with his confidence.

I then played with driving from zone 3 to try and get him more connected to my energy. We played around with walk, trot and back up. He was unsure of what I wanted when I asked for back up, so we spent a lot of time on this and by the end he was going backwards from a light phase on the rope.

I then mounted bareback and played around with walk and trot and also tried to get him to back up. But he didn’t understand what I was asking and wouldn’t yield backwards from the pressure on the halter. So I decided to not push him today and just left the back up for today and tomorrow I hope to work on this again from the ground and then try it again ridden.

Our trail ride today started off really well, Blossom took lead very quickly as she prefers to be in the front. She was very calm and relaxed until about half way and then she was a nightmare!! No idea what caused her to become like this and I don’t know if it was a left or right brained behaviour… She would be jogging and every time I applied pressure to slow her down she would pull her head down and pull against me!! I attempted to try and get her to stop and back up but this was only possible if I had her facing the opposite way. I also tried weaving and circling round some trees but nothing seemed to help. The strange thing was she was licking and chewing and blowing out most of the time during all this. That is the reason why I wasn’t sure if she was left or right brained…

When we got back I went straight into the indoor school as I didn’t think it would be a good idea to leave her for the day as she still wasn’t able to stop and back up. Eddy was in the school and after talking to him about the problems I had, he thinks it was possibly more left brained dominant behaviour as even back in the school she was still pulling and wouldn’t back up. Eddy helped with using his CS as I applied pressure to the reins, this did help as she wasn’t able to push into the pressure as easily. Eddy thinks it will be a good idea for just the two of us to go out one day and keep Blossom behind his horse to tech her to stay behind and keep calm. And by keeping her behind Eddy’s horse he will defend his horses space with his CS and keep Blossom behind without me applying too much pressure. So it should make life easier for me, it will be interesting too see how this goes when we try it. But I think she needs a lot more work in the school before we try going out on a trail again.