Friday 30th January

Today I started with Smarty and today online we worked on pretty much the same as yesterday so I won‘t bother writing it all again, the only difference today was he did seem to be much more relaxed and focused on me.

I then saddled and mounted and the first few minutes he was a little impulsive, but today as soon as he started this I started moving him sideways and doing shoulder in to get his attention on me and help him calm himself down. This really worked today and he settled very quickly, so we moved on and were just playing with straight lines and circles. But I felt he was starting to get quite bored with all this, so I decided to play about with him using patterns in preparation for him being a games pony. We played to start with the pattern we have already done while we have been here, going up to the first block and stopping and then moving on to the second one and turning this and coming back to the first and stopping again. This went really well and his turns were really good, I was using the technique Eddy had showed me and it really seems to be working well for Smarty. We then moved on to a new pattern and this was to go straight to the second block and turn this and come back towards the first and then turn this and go back to the second and then back to the first and stop. He picked this up really well and I could feel him asking questions like are we stopping or are we going or are we turning? It was really nice to see this from him! Lastly I worked on getting him to run for me to vault on him, he is starting to get the idea that he has to run for me to get on. But at the moment I still have to run with him for the first few strides, but he is now totally ok with me jumping off him when he is moving which is really good!

Today with Blossom I started online to get her connected to my energy and her focus on me and then we went into the round pen to play at liberty. The first 4 games were to me perfect, the send on the circle still needs a little work as sometimes she decided to go the opposite way to where I am sending her. But I am now able to do transitions up and down with only my energy and the disengage and draw back to me is really good! Squeeze game in one direction was really good (me in her left eye) but the opposite side she found difficult and would rush through and run off, but then come back to me. This happened a couple of times, so I attached the line to the string around her neck to help her gain more confidence playing this game. This seemed to help and we were then able to go back and play with it at liberty. Sideways, nothing actually went wrong but I would still like this to be a little better.

I then mounted and had a little ride around the arena with just the string on and she was really good, we even had a nice canter round the top half of the arena!
I then thought I should saddle her and try riding her and see if I can get the same results that Eddy was getting from her without Eddy riding her first. Today I also used the balance saddle on her as I didn’t want to change anything as if things did go wrong I would blame the equipment as the reason, instead of it might be something I am doing. Plus I really like riding in the balance saddle, I really feel that I am on my balance point and feel really secure. Think I will need to look into getting one when I get home for her.

Today it was like I was riding a totally new pony, it was amazing!! Walk, trot and canter felt so soft and relaxed and she didn’t pull or even really think about getting impulsive, I think maybe three times there was a stride of her getting impulsive and I just had to say “don’t go there” and use the strategies I have learnt from Eddy to keep her calm her again. It just felt so good, don’t get me wrong I still had to ride her and work quite hard to keep her in this state of mind!! So I finished after quite a short session as it was so tempting to just keep riding as it was so nice, but I now know that this isn’t a good idea and it is better for Blossom at this stage to keep the sessions short.
What an amazing day with her, I can’t believe the change in her!!