Allegro goes to play @ Rafter XX

On Canada Day, I met Tamara and Toby (her little mini) over at Rafter XX. I decided to give Allegro some travel experience and start playing online with him. My daughter came with me and she absolutely fell in love with little Toby. Such a cutie! She had tons of fun playing with him and I think Tamara was happy to have someone to play with him (since her pregnancy limits her playing a fair bit these days!). Toby was really wary of Holly at first and vice versa. But within an hour or so, and with Tamara's guidance, Holly got more confident with him and he with her. It was pretty cute. Video clip of Holly and Toby at the end.

Allegro loaded and travelled really well. Once in the arena, we just walked around and investigated stuff at first. Then started playing the 7 games. Friendly was fine...we've done tons of that at home with just about everything. Porcupine was good as well... he's actually really ticklish in his side, so he was twitching, swishing his tail and swinging his head around to scratch his side every time I touched him there, but he soon figured out that just moving away would stop the tickle! Yo yo was no problem. Driving game was stronger on his left side than his right... which really became apparent when we tried sideways. He'd go sideways really well to the right (with me on his left), but couldn't figure out what I wanted going the other way. It was the same with circling as well. If I tried to send him to the right, and support with the carrot stick, he'd move in the opposite direction. So we had some fairly lengthy "discussions" and he eventually managed to figure out what I wanted. I quit as soon as I was able to get 3 good sends in that direction.

Squeeze also had some issues.... more with disengaging and stopping than anything. He kept wanting to continue in a circle, and especially going left, he'd pull against the line and run into the savvy string rather than come off that pressure and stop against the wall. Again, we had some lengthy discussions, but came through it out the other side with 2 or 3 very nice disengagements in each direction in the end.

Then we just went around and played with some obstacles... cavaletti, ball, cones and tarp. None of the obstacles caused him any grief. He's really quite confident with most things, which I love. Photo attached is of Allegro pawing the tarp. The first time he crossed it, he pawed it up under him, then stretched out and peed on it! Crazy horse.

We were there for nearly 3 hours. A really fun day, and Allegro made some great progress.