Thursday 12th February

Today I had a really good day with Blossom, last night I had a look through the new self assessments and made a list of the things I couldn’t do or I would like to improve.

So today we played with:

1. Friendly games with CS, CS and plastic bag, ball and the tarp - all went very well
2. Lead by the tail - this could still be much better
3. Lead by the chin - lots of work needed she really doesn’t like this, I think we need lots more friendly in this area too.
4. Stick to me transitions in walk, trot and canter - canter still needs some work, I need to learn to run faster or Blossom needs to canter slower so this works better.
5. Transitions on a circle - today wasn’t to good as she was really leaning on the rope, so we went back to a shorter distance and just worked on getting the circles soft again.
6. Sideways without a fence
7. Sideways with a fence with me keeping my feet still - worked very well.
8. Sideways towards me - getting good, but still working on this against a wall
9. Sideways over a barrel - this took a lot of time as I would reward the slightest try as she found this really difficult. But she manage to go sideways all the way over by the end, so I was very proud of her as this as been a very challenging game for her since we started.
10. Squeeze game over a jump - very good in both directions
11. Squeeze over a single barrel - I positioned the barrel next to the wall to make it easier for her to see what it was she had to do. But she did find this really difficult and we had to do lots of approach and retreat to give her enough confidence to jump and even when she did jump she jumped it really high so I don’t think she was very confident so we will need to work more on this.

I then played a little stick to me at liberty and then mounted bareback and played with circles around the block. We then played with transitions in walk, trot and canter and everything was going really well so we done a little jumping and today it was a proper jump and we managed this fine.

I spoke with Eddy again about why we think she is better bareback and bridleless, rather than with a saddle and bridle/halter on. So to try and eliminate the problem I saddled her and rode her with just the string without anything on her head, and we were able to walk, trot and canter without any problems and she felt the same as she done bareback. So Eddy suggested trying her with the halter on and tie the rope into reins, but still just ride her from the string. So I done this, and to start with I felt she was maybe a little more impulsive, but thought it was maybe also just in my head.. But the test was when I came to jumping, it took three attempts to get her to jump the jump and even when she jumped it really wasn’t a nice jump. But as I didn’t jump her with the saddle and just the string, I didn’t know if having the halter on was the problem, well the only way to find out is to take the halter off again. So this is what I done, and guess what she jumped the jump first time without any hesitation and really jumped it well.
So I think I will need to work with all this again and find out id having something on her head is really the problem or was it just something today..