Sue and I played at liberty in the round pen. We have a lot of confidence building to do there. In change of directions, she wouldn’t face me to change direction…but just one way.
We worked on porcupine sidepassing and porcupine hindquarters disengagement. She ignores my leg when I’m riding her to sidepass to the left. Perhaps it will get better when we get it better on the ground.
Impulsion Bull’s Eye Game-We practiced walking and trotting around the outside of the round pen. Her job was to learn to go where my belly button pointed and then my leg told her. If her body didn’t go that way, she got lightly bumped with the reins….that was to the left.
I got really brave and picked up the carrot stick from where I had placed it on a small piece of wood along the rail. She flinched like she might erupt into outer space, but she ended up not moving.
I rubbed her all over with the carrot stick. After all, it’s my life that is a stake here!
Then we did the bulls eye at a walk and then at a “trot”. If she didn’t follow my belly button or leg, the carrot stick would swing down and tell her nose to stay on the round pen rail! If she slowed down, the carrot stick taped her rear end. It took a long time before she was able to go once around the round pen without the carrot stick helping.
When she slowed down, she was squeezed by my legs and if that was ignored, the carrot stick taped her rear end. You can again imagine that Ms Rocketship emerged again. I was able to relax and not pull back on the reins except for once, when she started her bolting rocketship imitation.
I believe that is what took her so long to realize that all she had to do was follow the round pen rail…it’s because she kept going right brain when I had to tap her rear end.
Someday, she won’t feel like she’s going to die when she first feels a light tap on her rear…maybe in about a year.
Then we went outside the arena. Only, we didn’t make it from the small shady area right outside the gate into the sunshine. We had to turn around and enter back into the arena…which she wasn’t really sure about either…and I got off.
I led her out into the sunshine and back into the shade a few times. Then we walked up to the 40 acres and I mounted up there.
We chatted with a new person and then we took off towards the east. She tried to fool me into thinking we were going in a straight line, but actually veer over and visit the pasture horses. That was the only trouble we had. We made it to the end of the pasture and we ate grass for a while. We walked back next to the tree and brush row. We even went over the dam of the small pond…a narrow squeeze thru place. We survived all of this without anything happening and we were happy.
I decided that I couldn’t emotionally make it all the way back to the halfway point, so we cheated and angled back to our mounting block.
I got off and thanked everyone! Sue got lots of treats today!