Revisiting L2 tasks with Gypsy

I finally got back to working on L2 tasks with Gypsy today. We had an awesome day! She behaved exactly the same as she did at the clinic. I started just by working on holding her tongue. Don had done this for me at the clinic as I hadn't had much success with that particular task. I tried again today and did fairly well! At first all I did was rub her nose and lips until she dropped her head, then stuck my fingers on her tongue and held them there until she stopped fussing and repeated this a few times. Eventually I did manage to sort of grab her tongue (slippery little sucker!) and pull it a bit out of the side of her mouth. Not as much as Don did, but I was pretty happy with it!

Then I did some extreme friendly game. Absolutely no problem. She moved her hind end over as I walked around behind her, but not from fear... I think she just thought she should move over for me. Then she did a lovely yoyo over a pole a couple times. I did 7 games with the barrels and she did awesome with all of it! I should have been taping!

We did sideways without a fence (toward and away)... she's pretty straight when she comes toward me, but always drifts forward still when going away from me, so I had to check her back a few times. Will have to keep working at that one. We did some transistions and change of direction on line which were great. The only thing I still can't do is get her to canter on line. I may save this one for an arena. Our ground is really uneven, so she's not comfortable cantering in our paddock (trips a lot).

After all that I went for a ride and walked some patterns around the barrels trying to get her to respond to my body movement rather than the rein. She's slowing starting to get there, but I still have to use the rein. Definitely better though.

I did try some cantering while riding her and she did pick up a canter in both directions, but just didn't maintain it for long. I didn't push it too much, just asked again, then transitioned down before she quit on her own. It's getting there!

Awesome day! :-)