13th August 2009

Plan

• Hill therapy
• friendly - legs, helicopter, lift leg, z3 toss rope over back, massage tail, pick up all for feet from one side, friendly flag
• Stick to me
• Touch it
• Circling game, practice me not moving feet
• Figure of 8's
• Drive weaving through cones
• Jumps
• Friendly ball
• Cross Tarps

Observation

An absolutely amazing session, learnt a lot!
Started with a lot of friendly. He is becoming very dominant with me, pushing me around and rubbing his itchies on me very hard. I matched his energy and brought my leadership up higher, I have been listening to pat talking about leadership and love and the balance between. I find it hard to be assertive at times because I dont want to be 'mean'. I found that the more assertive I got, the better he responded. It was interesting how quickly he stopped.

Larry has really changed as a horse. He is so much more confident and has been climbing the social ladder in the herd. He is beating everyone up except his love lulu and I have found that he has the same approach with me. He has also got a bit more play drive and I feel that some of the earlier probelms I had with him such as our sudden loss of yo-yo which used to be our best game is due to boredom (oh no the 7 jobs!!). Since he is becoming more confident I am trying to vary things as opposed to consistency.

Hill therapy, our first session, it was interesting to see how he handled himself (eek! hill therapy every play session now!). He pulled himself up the hill and fell down it. I havent ridden him in a while and will finish our hill therapy before I do again

I find that he is great at learning and this i believe is because of variance. This weekend I taught him to lead with his legs, even his hind which he hates having ropes around. I cant wait for the benefits of this, even though I dont want him to put his foot through a fence or something, it is great to know he will be prepared. I also started helicopter again and found that by doing it with the end of the 22ft instead of the carrot stick he is much happier, I guess that this is taking the pressure off him since he is still unconfident with the C.S. He was happier with it at his hind, not head area (RB position to run :D).

He is such a quick learner. We played on the tarp for a bit and he was the most confident I have seen him with the tarp so far. I read not long ago about a girl that asked her horse to lay down with her by getting on all fours and pawing the ground, her horse mirrored her. Well I didnt want to do that, its a bit too early, but I started pawing the tarp to see what he would do. I was pawing for a bit and he lifted his leg and put it back down, so I kept going and gently tapped his leg (how I asked him to pick up his legs) with the end of my C.S and he did 3/4 paws...well I was in tears!! I stopped and hugged him and he must have felt the positive energy...I asked him once more to reinforce and he did it again...I was hysterically crying with joy. I let him straight off the lead and ended it there, mainly because it was a great time to end the session with him feeling such positive energy, and secondly I didnt want to get too big for my boots and ask him for more stuff and confuse him. He stayed with me for a tiny bit, then walked straight back to the herd to beat them up....which was ok but I guess the herd still means more and I havent seen him in a while!

He is still turning circles around me, but I am putting my foot down and wont allow it anymore. As his confidence and leadership grows, my leadership must grow too, I must match and reinforce!!