Sunday 17th February

Today was another nice day, so I went out to the field to play with Blossom. We had a quick run through of the seven games on the 12 ft line before moving on to the 22ft line. I feel that sometimes I just expect too much from her if im on the 22ft rope from the start and sometimes I loss her confidence. Everything seemed ok so we moved on to the 22ft line and started with yo yo’s over a pole, she was quite un confident with this today so I used a lot of approach and retreat to gain her confidence. We then moved on to circling game and Blossom decided she wasn’t going on the send.. So I thought maybe I am doing something wrong, so I played friendly game with her and then backed her out and then asked her out on a circle but again she wouldn’t go. After her doing this a few times and everytime I lifted my carrot stick she would go backwards.. I was stuck!! So after reading a lot I knew I had a 50/50 chance of doing the right thing, so I decided to go through my phases to get her going on a circle. I had to go up to phase 4 and got a little buck when the string got her, but she did go out on a circle. After a couple of laps I asked her back in and rewarded her. The next send she went on a suggestion, so I think the problem was a dominance issue as after using phase 4 I didn’t have any other problems with her with the send.
We then played with change of direction, its getting better but she is still stopping when I go backwards. But I think she is starting to understand what I am asking her to do. I will keep playing with this as I do feel it is getting better everytime.
We then played stick to me, she was great!! I then jumped on her bareback and went for a walk round the field. She was so calm and relaxed it was like a different pony, she actually stopped and started eating grass and I had to go through my phases to get her going again! I didn’t think I would ever see the day I had to use phases to get Blossom to go! Amazing day!