Thursday 14th February

The past few nights Blossom has had some problems going to the field as they seem to be doing some sort of work at the farm and there is a few coils of the drainage pipes on the way to the field hidden behind a bush. Blossom has had some problems with these and is spooking quite badly at these going to and from the field. So I thought I would try and do some work with her tonight to try and help her overcome this fear.

I started with taking her into the field to play; I started with the friendly game and played a bit more with extreme friendly game! She was really good but was a little unconfident when I was in zone 5, we will need to work more on this. Porcupine on zone 1 and the HQ was really good and only needed phase one. But the FQ wasn’t as good to start with as she wanted to move forward instead of yielding to the pressure. But after a few attempts she was doing it really well and was starting to pivot round. Yo Yo game was really good and she went back all the way on the 22ft line and stayed straight and seemed to be very confident, but the draw wasn’t great. So we will need to do a bit more work on this to get this better.

I was dreading playing the circling game after all my problems on Sunday with this game. But much to my surprise everything went really well and I managed to get 4 laps in both directions without any problems. So I moved on to sideways and started doing some work without a fence – This is our most difficult game and has caused us the most problems through our journey so far. So tonight I just asked for a couple of steps at a time and I was so please at how well we were getting on with this she was really trying hard and she was licking and chewing lots!!

We then went back to circling game, after checking she was able to circle all the way round me in both directions without any problems I moved on to change of direction.. This was the first time we had tried this, the first two were really good but then we had a few problems with her stopping when I started running backwards. So to try and fix this problem I slowed things down and made it a smaller circle. This seemed to help and she was more confident with the draw the next time I asked on a full circle. I was so happy.

I then decided to go for a walk with her down the road to the scary pipes to see if I could help her with this problem. It was really interesting as she had lots of thresholds walking down the road; she has never showed me this side of her before. She wanted to stop a lot so I let her and played friendly game until she was confident to walk again. When we got near the pipes she leapt in the air and ran past it. I have never seen her this spooky before, so we done lots of approach and retreat and then moved on to walking past it with me between Blossom and the pipes. She then became confident enough to put her nose on the pipes. So we then played squeeze game in between the pipes, and me she needed quite a big space to start with and was still rushing through. But after a few tries she was walking through a gap just big enough for her to fit. She even stopped a few times to sniff the pipes and stick her head in the hole to check for any monsters that might have been hiding in there!!
It was amazing to see the change in her, she was so confident by the end of playing with the pipes I could hardly believe it!! By now it was 9pm so I thought I better head back to the stables, so on the way back up the road I got her to play ‘Can you put your nose on…..’ She was really good at this and managed to put her nose on the pipes, a gate, a wheely bin, a low wall, a high wall, a pile of bricks and a large stone.

We were then only about a minute walk from the stables, so I decided to jump on her and ride her back. She stood perfect for me to get on and walked up the road so calm and relaxed. When we got to the yard I asked her to back up, only one-step at a time but she was really good and tried so hard. I have tried to get her to back with me on her before and she just pushed into the pressure and lost all confidence in me. So this was a really good thing for us to achieve tonight.

Tonight I felt was an amazing night I just felt tonight me and Blossom were actually partners and I feel she is now trusting me as a leader if feels so good!!