Sunday 2nd December

Today I was going to clip Kathleen's horse for her so I decided to take Blossom with me. Well I have found that we have a hole in trailer loading!! I have never had problems with Blossom loading before I started Parelli, which is strange. But I think she is now confident with as me as a leader to show me her fears. It took about five minutes of approach and retreat to load her to go, once she is in she does seem settled. But I don't think she likes travelling herself and she did shout a bit throughout the journey. When we did arrive (it was only a 45min drive) she was quite settled in the trailer so we unloaded her and put her in a spare stable while I clipped Spot. We then headed out to play in the school, Blossom walked by my side down to the school and stopped when I stopped I was really pleased with her as there was the other horses galloping about the field next to us. Once in the school we played some friendly game, then moved on to the yo yo game. She was more confident today going backwards online than she was yesterday. We then played with the circling game, I was actually having to ask her to trot on the circle as she was just walking round. Strange Blossom not wanting to go fast!! Again today sideways was good, we are still using a fence because I want to make sure she is totally confident with this before we move on! There was lovely pig shaped jump fillers that I just had to use - so I got Blossom to squeeze through them, I expected her to be quite nervous about these as they were really bright pink!! But she just walked through, turned and faced. Again to the right she was a little more hesitant but she is getting better with this. We then played with some trotting poles and a jump and stopped after she jumped with me on her right, I was so proud of her!! I then played with Spot as Kathleen was having some problems with driving the HQ. I got Spot to do a lovely few steps - what we did find was Kathleen hasn't found her phase 4 so Spot isn't really listening to her yet.
I then mounted up on Blossom and walked round the school checking my laterel flexion on both riens, so I knew she was going to be safe to hack. We then went for a walk down the road, Blossom seemed to love it. The roads were quite flooded due to all the rain and a burst pipe at the side of the road, so I made the most of the situation and got Blossom walking through the puddles! She was really calm most of the way, but I think she was getting quite annoyed having to keep stopping to wait for Spot to catch up - he is such a slow walker. So at these points she did get quite jumpy and didn't won't to stand still, so I used lateral flexion to stop her. But even then as soon as I asked her to go forward again she would get all prancy, at one point she ended up facing backwards so I made the most of it and asked for back up. This really seemed to work as once we turned round she walked nicely the whole way back.

The real problems started when we tried to load her again!! I Think it took a good 20 mins before she was confident enough to walk in. But even then she could have done with alot more approach and retreat than I was able to give her there. It was starting to get dark and I really didn't want to make the situation worse for her. So as soon as she went in semi confident, I had to leave her in, so we could get home. I hope to do some work on trailer loading this week, as I would really like to sort this problem out now as I want to be able to go places with Blossom. So I want to know that she is going to be happy travelling!