Wednesday 3rd December

Today with Blossom we started online playing the seven games pretending we were at liberty it went quite well but I need to do a little more work on my porcupine game as she wasn’t yielding from pressure very well. We then played with circles, she was much calmer today so we done some transitions which went very well, she went up and down from phase one. I then moved on to working on change of direction, we didn’t actually get a change but she was coming in when I started walking backwards and giving me two eyes so she got a rest and lots of friendly for that!
We moved on to playing point to point with sideways game again, she was really good and was moving with just my energy in my body from one marker to the next.

I then saddled and we started with follow the rail of the arena and the started asking for some sideways too. Sideways didn’t go great as she still tends to push into the halter to try and go forward, basically all the problems we did have on the ground are now happening in the saddle.. So hopefully has my online sideways improves so will my ridden.

We the started riding the rail of the round pen adding in some trot transitions, but after about two strides of trot she became really impulsive and a few times took off into canter!! I worked with her slowly for about 30 minutes making sure we had lots of rest periods and back up and still I was having the same problem. By then I had the arena to myself so I decided I would try a passenger lesson with her and just let her choose the speed. So this passenger lesson involved quite a lot of gallop, and after about 20 minutes she relaxed and I got a lovely trot around the arena on a loose rein so I was very happy about this. So if doing a passenger lesson like this works for her then maybe this is something I will have to do more often with her..

Today with Smarty I played all seven games with him and they are now getting really good, I am really impressed at how quickly he is picking everything up!!
I then played friendly with the rope and the walked him around with the rope on his bum, then gradually moving it further down so it was closer to his legs and then retreating again. I would have like to have spenta little longer on this but tonight is my turn to cook so I am going in the house early to get everything ready - fingers crossed it works!!