Wednesday 24th September

Tonight I came home with a massive smile on my face – Our play session just seemed to go so well!!

Blossom caught me really well so we played lots of friendly before driving from zone 3 down to near the trailer as I had left her boots and 22ft rope down there. I decided since we were next to the round pen we would go in there and have a play. We played all seven games making sure I had lots of slack in the rope so it was like we were at liberty. Everything went really well, games 1-6 were really, sideways still needs quite a lot of work so Il work more with this.

Blossom was really calm and focused on me so I decided to give it a go at liberty. Games 1-4 were brilliant I couldn’t fault them, even her draw in the yo yo game was great! The first set of circles were good and the disengage and draw was good, but in the other direction she tuned out from me a little so disengaging her took a few attempts. But once she noticed me again her disengage and draw were really good. Squeeze game went ok, I could get her to go through the squeeze but she left instead of turning to me, but then came straight back to me so I was still happy with that. I decided not to even bother trying sideways as this just isn’t good enough online to even think about doing it at liberty.

I didn’t want to do too much in the round pen so we went back out and played with some of the obstacles in the field Fillers, jumps, tarp, poles, cones, barrels and the game was to start at one obstacle and play friendly move on to the next and play porcupine etc. I was really fun and made us both think a lot more than we normally would.

We then moved on to playing with just circles trying to get these soft and keep Blossom left brained. We had a few little right brained moments, but no crazy spells like we have been having which was really nice. Again tonight she was lowering her head and blowing out while trotting round, she even done this a couple of time in canter too!! Transitions went well, and the best bit was we even got some really nice change of directions!! I have know learnt to read Blossom so much better and from this I was able to see when she was LB and focused on me and if she is change of direction comes quite well. It felt brilliant and now I know what I need to do to be able to do this and to help improve this. I have managed to get a couple of change of directions before, but this is the first time where I have known why I got them and what I need to do to get them again.

We then played stick to me on the way down to the trailer. I then pointed to the trailer from about 50feet away and she just took off into trot and straight into the trailer – I had to run behind her to keep up with her! I was really impressed as she was quite happy standing in there, the best part was the front ramp was totally closed up and this is the first time she has loaded in with the ramp closed never mind trot in. I asked her in and out a couple of times as before I have sometimes had problems getting her to come back out. Tonight she was as good coming out as she was going in, it was brilliant she seems to love the trailer now.

We finished on that and headed up to the stables to give her a feed as she seems to be starting to loose a little weight with all this play. She was really calm and relaxed up at the stables and even went into one of the stables first time, which is a massive thing for her!!