Thursday 28th August

Tonight I went out to play with Blossom – my plan was to have a quick run through of all the level 2 tasks so I could see what ones still need work as I would like to start filming soon. But that plan quickly went out the window as I noticed when picking out Blossom’s feet that her back shoe is becoming loose. So I decided to play safe and not ask her to do much work ie circles and jumps.

So we started with playing with a pole, not sure how I’m meant to play friendly with a pole so just stood her next to the pole and used the CS. Then played porcupine and driving game moving her around so she would be facing the opposite way next to the pole. Yo yo game was next over the pole, but I found she is still having problems with this and her back up goes squint. So we spent a lot of time using approach and retreat to try and gain her confidence. She appears to be happy to go over the pole but doesn’t seem to like in when she is about 3 ft away and the pole is behind her. So my aim tonight was to forget about getting her to go over the pole, but to try and get her to a stage where she would happily stand straight with the pole behind her. I got her to a stage where she was standing straight a few feet away so I decided to leave it there for the night.

We then played with sideways game (remembered to play this game!!) I was having a few problems tonight with judging is she going sideways or is she going forwards and sideways… So to help me out and stop me correcting Blossom when she might have been doing it correct I used two poles so I could judge better if she was going forwards. Seemed to help as I got some really nice sideways from her, but I still don’t feel she is really confident doing this, so think I might go back to the fence for a while..

Next I decided to pretend I was at liberty as I haven’t set up a round pen or anything yet and play with needle prep, holding the tongue and smell the tail. Needle prep and smell your tail went really well – really happy with that. The first couple of times I held her tongue she still had a lot of movement in her mouth and took a minute or so to relax. But next time I done it she happily let me hold her tongue and even once I let it go, she just left it sticking out her mouth!

I then played with lead by the leg, which went very well so I decided just to finish on that for the night. Really good session tonight and I think Blossom enjoyed it too as I wasn’t asking her to go all the time.