Tuesday 16th September

Today it was raining all day, just for a change! But when I got to the farm at night it was just drizzling, so I thought I would go out and play with Blossom and see how our relationship was after our weekend away…

Blossom caught me really well and we played some friendly before I haltered her, she had some really itchy spots so she was glad I was there getting them all for her. Once haltered I played extreme friendly game with her, which she was fine with. We then played with porcupine and driving. She was moving her feet a lot while I moved her FQ and HQ so need to do a little bit of work on this. Yo yo game was good, so we moved on to playing yo yo over a pole. She still goes just that little bit squint but she is much better than she used to be and no longer appears to have any problems with going over the pole.

We then played with figure of eight around two cones, walk was good and trot was good to start with but then she started pulling and getting bracey. So we had to work on getting her nice and soft through the pattern again before we finished, which we managed quick enough. I think this is Blossom way of testing my leadership as this seems to be the only problem we really ever have….

Circling game went of to a horrible start, Blossom just wasn’t for playing! I would send her on a circle and after a couple of strides she would stop, turn and face and then pull back. Then when I asked her to go again she would take off usually in the opposite direction then stop and pull… No idea why she does this sometimes, its not even as if she stops behind my back it can be anywhere on the circle..
Tonight I wasn’t letting her off with this as this is starting to become a regular problem in our play sessions. So I decided to bring her back in and play some friendly game, then I re – sent her but making sure I kept my energy really low and didn’t give her all the line so she could only circle on approx 12ft. She managed to circle in walk really well for about 4 laps each way. So I thought I would try for trot and on a larger circle, I expected to get problems again but nope she went like a little angel, no tension on the line, head down I couldn’t fault her. I then asked for transitions, again it was perfect very light phase one got me both upward and downward transitions. So thought I better quit on that!

Next I played with squeeze game over a jump, after playing about with the poles and barrels Blossom decided that it would be ok to jump the jump. I just started with a cross pole on the barrels then moved up to a straight bar and he jumped it without hesitation. I was so happy as this is the highest she has ever jumped on line before, this was a massive achievement for us!

I finished our session off with playing ‘smell your tail’ ‘needle prep’ and ‘hold the tongue’ I didn’t spend much time on any of these as the rain had stopped so the beasties were out in force and were really biting me and Blossom. So because of this we finished a little earlier than I would have liked too, but we finished on a good note which was the main thing.