Wednesday 7th January

The tractor is alive again!!!

So today with Blossom play was back to normal, today we played with:

1. Driving from zone 5
2. Yo Yo game, improving our drive and draw
3. Sideways over a pole - getting much better
4. Circling game with transitions and change of direction
5. Back up from her tail
6. Lead by the jaw and ear

Again today everything went well, she got really impulsive and started playing up in the circling game at one point. But I just matched her energy and put her in front of lots of obstacles and she soon calmed herself down.

Getting her to back up from pressure on her tail and lead by the jaw and ear all went very well and I will continue to work with these to get her really yielding from a soft pressure.

I then saddled and played with back up transitions only using my feet, I had to use my reins or the CS the first couple of times but then she was really good and backing really well. I then played with trot transitions on a circle at the bottom of the arena and she was so good and was really connected to my energy in my body and stopped as soon as I thought about stopping. We then played with the figure of eight pattern and again today I was able to do this using only a CS, so I was really happy! I then decided seen as everything was going so well we would try a canter, she was quite calm in the canter and we only done a couple of small circles and then back to trot. But because of the canter this then made her quite impulsive, so I had to work to get her relaxed again but this didn’t actually take very long. So we did have a few more canters and each time seemed to get better and better!!

Today with Smarty I played with him on line we played with:

1. Stick to me in walk and back up
2. Standing on the pedestal
3. Sideways - which is now getting much better
4. Circling trying to get the circles soft
5. Transitions on a circle
6. Jumping on a circle

He was really good today, a little impulsive at some points when he was circling but I think he just got a little worried with me asking new things of him.