Today I had loads of new ideas to try to do with Blossom, but I had to make sure I didn't ask for too much so she would lose her confidnce as she has become more confident recently - its great to see.
We started on the 12ft line and had a run through of the seven games, we had some problems with the sideways game and this was still using a fence. I think this may have been because we asked a bit more of her yesterday using this game. We worked on this for a bit until she seemed more confident, think I will need to do more work on this as this has always been our problem game.
We then moved on to playing with the hula hoop, I started with playing friendly game rubbing her all over with it. She stood perfect and wasn't bothered by this, I then asked her to lower her head and put it through the hula hoop which she did. She even had a wee nible of it while it was around her neck. I then moved on and asked her to a foot in the hoop, it took her a few minutes to work out what it was I was asking. But as soon as she put her foot in it she instantly dropped her head and relaxed it was so cool!! We then moved on and done figures of eight around cones (the same exercise from saturday) It went really well, so we went back to the hula hoop. As soon as we got to the hoop she went and put both feet straight in. So I thought I would try my luck and ask her to back into the hoop, she was slightly unconfident but as soon as she realised this was what she had to do, she done it then totally relaxed again. We then done some work with squezing over jumps, she is still quite unconfident with this so we done lots of aproach and retreat and by the end she was doing it great. We then moved on to backing up over a pole, I had tried this with her before but she totally lost her confidence and wouldn't do it. So this time I started with asking her to come to me walking over the pole, then I asked just her front feet to come over. Then would asked for her to back away over the pole, then come back to me. I done this several times until we were doing yo yo's on the 22ft line over the pole - she was great!! We then went back to the hulo hoop and as soon as she got to it she put both front feet straight in and stood relaxed! So I thought this would be a good place to stop for the day.
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3 comments:
You are getting SO imaginative. Love the play with the hoolahoop, great stuff. And the sideways, have you seperated, isolated and recombined. I found this very helpful with this game as Tara was very reluctant to do it at first. When you break it down it's just a Forehand then a hindquarter yield! If you do just one step of forehand and then one step of hindquarter and stop/friendly then build it usually makes more sense to your horse. Good luck. I managed just two steps of this today with SOl, feel like a beginner again! lol.
Hi Shelley,
Yeah this it what I am doing with her, it really does seem to help her!!
You and Sol seem to be getting on great - he must be a quick learner!
Leanne
It sounds like Blossom was beginning to think of the hula hoop as her "safe place" - like a lot of horses do with a pedestal.
Hmmmmm...
Kris
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