Monday 31st March

Tonight the weather was lovely, what a difference with the clocks changing its still light till after 8pm!!

Well I started with playing with the S pattern walking backwards, which went really well and really got Blossom's attention on me. We then played with the fallen leaf pattern and circles at the same time. She starts getting quite grumpy if I do to many fallen leaf, so I add circles in every now and then to really keep her focus!

We then played squeeze game with some of the obstacles I had set out for Aicha, Trotting poles, fillers, tarp. She done them all really well and didn't seem to have any problems with anything tonight which was good to see.

We then played with yo yo game, again the draw wasn't very good so I done what I saw Shelley do with her and used slapping the ground with the carrot stick as phase four and she came to me the rest of the time on phase 1 - how interesting!!

Next was circling game, my intention was to work on change of direction but Blossom had loads of go tonight so there was no way that was going to work as all she wanted to do was gallop. So I changed mt plan to working on transitions on the circle instead. To start with I had to go up to phase 4 to get her to come from canter to trot and the same trot to walk. Doing upwards transitions all I had to do was point my finger and she would change speed. But after playing with it for a bit, she got the idea and I was soon able to get her to make the transitions up or down in a half circle, using only phase 1 and 2 and a little voice as she already understands this. I thought it would help her understand that the rope wiggling means slow down not jump in the air to a halt and face me!!

We then went for a little walk round the field to cool her off as all that running mad on a circle had got her all sweaty. We used this time to work on stick to me and driving from zone 3 - she was really good at stick to me tonight!! We finished our session back on the yard with playing smell your tail, she found this quite difficult at the start and had to move her feet a lot but quickly got the idea and became quite relaxed with her head round sniffing her tail.