Collection, Cantering and Cues with Gypsy

Today Tania and I planned to meet at the outdoor Fultonvale arena, but since it was pouring rain, we switched to 3D Equestrian Ctr. Tania has been to Parelli clinics as well as various reining clinics and helped me out a bit by sharing some of her reining experiences.

Because Gypsy usually interprets any leg pressure as "go forward", we worked on getting her to yield to the leg pressure rather than move forward. One thing was trying to get her to differentiate whether I wanted to move her front end vs her hind end. Tania suggested I may be quitting before she gets it and/or maybe not having a strong enough phase 4, because Gypsy frequently ignores my leg. We worked on leg yields while up against a wall. She was really good to the left, but struggled moving off my leg to the right. I kept at this for quite a while until she was responding relatively consistently, then moved on to trying to get her to yield one way or the other while moving. She seems to forget everything once she's moving!

Most of the time Gypsy would drift off the rail toward the middle of the arena (and completely avoided one side of the arena with a cutting dummy mounted on it... seems she didn't like the wires much... maybe reminded her of electric fence??), so I worked on getting her to yield off my leg. When I added leg pressure while we were moving forward, again she interpreted as go faster. So for a while we had a bit of a battle -- her moving forward instead of off my leg, then also pushing through the bit as well. Tania felt that if I got spurs, she wouldn't push through my leg. All I'd need is to let her know the spurs were there for phase 4 if needed, but don't use them unless she ignored me. Might be something to consider because I was digging my heel into her side with no effect except her thinking "go faster."

A couple times I got frustrated and emotional, but managed to work through it, and by the end of the day, even though it wasn't perfect, Gypsy was starting to respond.

After all that I also worked on softening and collecting her (see attached video clip...much of the background noise is the rain on the roof) . She still tosses her head a fair bit. She frequently finds the sweet spot where I release to her, but doesn't stay there. She's also better going left than right. Her head pops up more when we're going right. But I have to say, I am pleased with her progress considering I only tried this for the first time at the Parelli clinic a few weeks ago.

After that we also tried cantering (above photos). Each time we try this, it gets better and better. She's picking up the canter quicker, managing to maintain gait longer and today even let me pick up the reins a bit without breaking to a trot. Long way to go before it's nice and soft and responsive, but we're making progress!

Anyway, I came away from this with some good encouragement from both Tania and Stacey (one of the owners of 3D who was also riding there) as well as some ideas for improving Gypsy's sensitivity to my cues. Really appreciate their help!

Skittles teaches me to lower phases

I spent an hour or so with Skittles on Monday. The last time I worked with her (sadly, over 2 weeks ago), I started wondering if it was always going to take so long for her to settle down and move from right-brained to left-brained. I've been doing tons of retreat retreat retreat, assuming that if she's afraid, I need to retreat. Anyway, long story short, instead of retreating last time, I upped my energy to match hers and started getting more firm with asking her to yield. And if she wanted to back up, then OK, let's back up a LOT and QUICKLY. Or if she wanted to go sideways, then let's go sideways LOTS and QUICKLY. And guess what? She calmed down almost instantly. Lowered head, lots of licking and chewing.

On Monday, I started with that again if she felt like being her usual freaky self. And she was, so we repeated what we did last time and it worked again. This isn't to say she still didn't go right-brained here and there after that, but it was less frequent and for less time. Amy suggested this might be "left-brained fear".... I wonder if there is such a thing, because it makes sense... since as long as she acted like that I wasn't asking anything of her until she settled (which she never seemed to want to do) .... hmmmm.....

Anyway, becoming more assertive and firm right at the start seems to really establish me as the leader in her eyes and she gets left-brained MUCH faster.

After I had her attention we worked on refining the 7 games, and added in obstacles. One thing I often forget with Skittles is that it takes WAY less ask for her than for any of my other horses. She's SO sensitive that when I start waiving my stick around I might as well be shouting through a bullhorn; too much noise. I finger-waggle is all she needs. So once I have her jumping out of her skin from shouting at her with the stick, I remember, "Right, this is Skittles, LOWER THE PHASES!" I still held the stick in my hand, but mostly kept it lowered unless she ignored my phase 1 cues (for the quick 2-3-4, right?)

The attached video clip (I just figured out how to do this!!) shows me working on the driving game through pylons with her. This is just after I realized I was shouting, but just before we had it perfected with just lifting my finger. After about the 4th time through, all I had to do was point my finger at her head to drive her away, and just take one step back to draw her toward me. Very nice! And lots of licking and chewing. My son took the video, so it's not a complete circuit of the pylons, but right at the very end you can see me pointing my finger at her head to go on the far side of the next pylon.

Practicing canter @ 3D

It must be like 35C today. HOT!! I took Gypsy over to 3D Equestrian Ctr. today so I could use their INDOOR arena. Still muggy and hot, but not as hot as outside. They've done some work fixing up the place lately... stalls all painted white and now there's a new partner who co-owns the place: Will Hansen. I met him today too -- he was riding in the arena when I started and we chatted a bit. Nice guy!

ANYWAY... once I got on Gypsy (after a bit of ground work), we just walked around on a loose rein for a while until she was nice and relaxed and blowing. Then we just worked a bit on moving her off my leg without moving faster (still not getting much success with this), and getting the softer feel in the bit.

Once she was loosened up and paying attention I started to ask for the canter. Will was still riding around, but other than that, I had the arena to myself -- so lots of room for Gypsy to move. It took a few tries (lots of saddle slapping at first), but eventually she picked up the canter. And after several stops and starts, the ask took less and less. Still a fair bit of trotting before she picks up the canter, but I am confident that with regular work, she'll get more and more responsive.

While I was riding her, Will commented that I should leave her head alone more. I thought I was, but old "english" habits die hard I guess. And the pictures prove it! I guess I was holding her back a bit. The last photo at least shows me leaving her head alone. I also have to sit back a bit more. Again, I thought I was, but it doesn't look like it in the photos. Always good to see what you look like. I'd like to start taping some of my rides... I think it might help me improve faster. A girl working at the stable helped me out by taking these few photos.

Toward the end of our ride, I even managed a few rough simple changes through the middle of the arena. She managed to get on the right lead each time, so I was really proud of that. I still haven't attempted to get her to canter online yet, but hopefully once she learns to collect a bit at the canter in an arena, maybe cantering online will be easier. When we were done, I took off her saddle and let her roll around. She was pretty sweaty! So was I!

All in all, a really successful day, albeit a HOT one! :-)

More 7 games with Indy

Today I worked with Indy. I wasn't sure if I would ride or not when I started, but for sure I was going to get through all 7 games with her. In the end, I didn't ride... the 7 games took longer than I thought it would with her! Maybe I'm too much of a perfectionist!

Friendly game: no problem.

Porcupine Game: Zone 1 - phase 1. Zone 2 - phase 1/2. Zone 3 - phase 1. I don't think I did the porcupine game in zone 4 or 5. She started not paying much attention to me, but I got her attention with the carrot stick on her chest when she was ignoring my finger pressure on her nose. That got her attention which resulted in mostly phase 1 after that!

Driving Game: Really good driving her hind end. But she didn't always step under, but rather stepped sideways and back. So I persisted each time until she stepped under. Probably being too picky? Driving her front end was not as easy. She tends to be rather pushy and tried avoiding the carrot stick instead of yielding, but once she figured out she couldn't get her head over the stick, she yielded. Again I was picky about her crossing in front rather than behind before I released. We've done the 7 games before, so I figured it was safe to be picky (i.e. not releasing as soon as she shifted sideways, but waiting for the specific foot movement).

Yoyo Game: We worked on this a fair bit. Her yoyo back was pretty decent. After a quick phase 4 I did when she looked like she was falling asleep with phase 1, she really paid attention and was fairly consistent with backing at around phase 2. But there was a lot of resistance with her bring back. And it didn't improve a ton the rest of the day. I tried to yoyo her back through some barrels and my first attempt did not work at all. She kept veering away and trying to trot off. So I tried it backwards and let her lead through the barrels, stop between them, yoyo them back and a bit forward of the barrels, then back, etc. etc. until she was able to start well in front of the barrels and back quietly through them. The last few 2 or 3 times back she did lots of licking and chewing

Circle Game: Wow, we spent lots of time on this one. She had a really hard time with maintaining gate, or perhaps it was just not understanding what I wanted. In hindsight, I should have started with the small circle game (like I showed Sarah with Jake). She would trot ahead and abruptly stop. Then do that again over and over each time I re-sent her. Many times she would stop behind me and when I asked her to go again, she'd cut the circle toward me and I would have to defend my space to keep her from coming over me. A couple times as I tried to drive her hindquarters away from me, she made like she was going to kick. She's done this a lot this year. Serious attitude from this girl!! At one point she ignorned my send and tossed her head at me and I immediately went to phase 4 with the string behind her, which launched her (and ultimately me too) sideways into the air. Then she stood there blowing and staring at me. Hmmm maybe I mean business, hey? I sent her again (phase 1), she stared but didn't move, then I slowly lifted the carrot stick to the side and she launched into a trot around me pulling all the way around, the abruptly stopped and changed direction and kept trotting around. I left her doing that. I think she did about 4 or 5 wonky circles and started blowing, so this was when I disengaged her and rubbed her a fair bit. I tried a couple more circles after that and tried to keep her at a walk. The last couple were a more relaxed, but not precisely "circles".

Squeeze Game: No problem with this one. Maybe a bit slow, but she got it. Nice disengagement and back up after as well. We did both the basic squeeze against the fence as well as squeeze over a jump. She didn't really jump. She kind of just stepped over. I didn't ask for anything faster today.... I'll maybe ask for some more life next time!

Sideways game: She struggled with this one as well. And maybe I was too picky with this too. She moved her front and back separately most of the way. As soon as she was able to take a sideways step with both front and back feet I stopped and rubbed her with the stick. But again, a few times while I was driving her hind end, she threatened to kick. I was far enough away to be safe, but it irked me! She was able to go sideways better to the right than the left. Not sure if that had anything to do with going downhill in that direction or not? But I continued to ask both way until she gave me at least one simultaneous sideways step before the release. I guess we'll see if it worked if it gets better next time!

She's definitely flexing her left-brained muscles. She may be more of a challenge than I first thought! But this threatening to kick has got to stop! Anyone out there have any advice? Do I put her to work as soon as she does that? Not sure.

Thanks for listening! See you next time!