Catching up again

Monday this week the temperature got to about 35C without a breath of wind. HOT man!! So I took the opportunity again to spray all the horses. This time the only snorting and backing up was from the movement of the hose as I approached. After the water started flowing, they all stood still with an "Ahhhhhhh" look on their faces! Even Indy who went kind of snakey last time. She flinched at first, but didn't move away and quickly settled once the water started flowing over her.

Tuesday was warm, but not hot (26-ish). I decided to try the 7 games in 7 minutes at liberty with Gypsy. Well, actually, I didn't time myself; I just wanted to see if I could do the 7 games at liberty. Most definitely, a liberty session gives you the TRUTH! AND, it teaches you when you need to back off. I DEFINITELY need to work on this one more. Friendly game went fine -- even the extreme friendly game with slapping the savvy string on the ground all around her. Porcupine was OK too, although she wasn't as responsive as I would like (phase 3). Driving game went OK too, front and back, although she walked off a couple times when I was trying to drive her hind end away. I guess she thought I meant "move forward" (which tends to be her answer to most things when she's not sure). But after a few more attempts I got my timing right (the release) when she got it right, so she didn't feel the need to leave. Yoyo was hilarious. She's always resisted backing up, so without the line shaking, she just tossed her head at me with her ears back (annoyance), so I flicked the carrot stick at her chest which got her attention, but then she just left. So I brought her back, tried again and took it one step at a time: Yoyo one step back, then bring her back, yoyo 2 steps back, then bring her back. The bring back is no problem, but she really hates backing up. So this will definitely need more work as well. Wow, liberty really does test your savvy!

Circling went OK, if you disregard the yoyo at the start. I more or less sent her on the circle from where I was standing beside her. She frequently asked to come in the first 4 or 5 circles, so I was constantly sending her, but eventually I got a couple good circles and her bring back was nice.

Sideways was equally as challenging as the yoyo. Once I started driving her sideways, she'd just leave. So again, I needed to break it down to one step at a time and reward for that. Squeeze: same thing: She'd squeeze just fine, but wouldn't turn and back up, she just kept going!

Wow, this really opened my eyes! And this was in the round corral too, so really even that wasn't the WHOLE truth! :-)

Then I decided to try getting her to canter again. She's never been able to canter online, and the last time I tried this, we did it in the round corral as well, but all I succeeded in doing was making her go right-brained and look for an escape. This time wasn't much better (I had to keep adding pressure to get her to canter a few strides and the added pressure had her looking for a way out of the round corral). However, once she did canter a few strides I immediately stopped the pressure and stood in the center, and she immediately broke to a trot. I asked again - first the pointing, then raising the carrot stick, then swinging the string in zone 5. Again, I had to repeat this several times to get her to canter a few strides, and when she did I stood at "neutral" again, and she immediately broke into a trot. We repeated this a couple times more, the last time I stayed facing her, but kept my stick low (after she started cantering), then after about 4 strides, I asked for a disengagement before she stopped on her own. I left it at that. She was still pretty right-brained, but she did come right in at the trot when I disengaged her and immediately started licking and chewing. Hopefully next time will go better and she can start to maintain the canter on her own -- a bit anyway!

Then I just went for a quick ride up and down the road and let my daughter and her friend have a ride as well.

Tuesday was humbling for me. Definitely, Gypsy has been great on line, and I've been pretty pleased with myself. But liberty really makes you pay attention to what you're doing and it's clear we (I) have work to do to get Gypsy to WANT to stay with me. It went OK, but I definitely thought it would go better than it did!