Monday 8th September

Well what a change in the weather – it was a really nice day today we even had little bits of sun!!

I headed of to the field to catch Blossom and just took all her tack and ropes down with me in a wheelbarrow (saves carrying it) Blossom and shady came down to meet me at the gate, Blossom was quite grumpy tonight and it took me a few minutes for her to catch me with a happy face. I then haltered her and then took her rug off, which she has had on the past couple of days because of the weather. So I played lots of friendly getting all her itchy spots for her, she loved that. We the started playing with yo yo game, she was very slow on the first one to me it looked quite dominant behaviour so I used phase 4 a couple of times and the second yo yo was so much better.

We then moved on to circling, as always working on getting her soft on the circle and stop her leaning on the rope. What I did notice about myself though is I tend to move my feet and move with her, so I need to try and keep my feet still again so that I’m not giving to her pulling.

We then played circling on the move, she was full of energy and I got some lovely transitions to canter. At one point she good all excited and was leaping and bucking – it was nice to watch it was more a left brain behaviour as her ears were forward and she just looked like she was having so much fun!! The as soon as I disengaged her she would turn in with her ears forward and then trot to me when I asked her in. It was really nice to see her in a more playful way, totally full of fun!

I then felt all the excess energy was out so saddled and bridled her and girthed in three stages. I then done a little bit of games training with her starting with bending, in my view this is very similar to the new patterns for weave…She done this very well and very calm, in walk, trot and then canter. We then moved on to a barrel race, I didn’t bother too much about the equipment but just worked on going round the barrels – she was really good and again very calm.

We then moved on to 9 step back up from walk, it wasn’t great to start with as she was quite bracey but she quickly got the idea and was dropping her head and backing really nice. I then decided to ask for sideways, I haven’t done much of this only really done it when I was on Jackie’s course. So it really took me by surprise how well it went, she wasn’t as soft as I would like but she went sideways!! I decided to combine it all together and asked her to walk, trot and few strides, then back to walk, the 9 step back up, sideways and just kept mixing everything up and changing the sequence of how I was doing stuff. She was really good and I could feel her getting softer and really listening to me waiting to see what I was going to ask her to do next. It felt amazing so finished on that for the night.