A point to point pattern on the circle?

That's what it seemed like to me.

Here's what I did: I came down this morning and it was so nice and crisp that I decided to play with Gingy for a little while before feeding him(Marsan didn't like this, she kept pawing at her feed pan LOL). Just the like the weather Gingo was pretty feisty, which was great!

I started out with a little puzzle just to see how he was doing. For as long as I can remember I played with Gingy putting his feet in the feedbuckets that we have, so that was part of the puzzle. Go to the bucket and GET IN! What made it fun was seeing how far away I could send him from.

Then we went in the roundpen to experiment some more with circling. I meant to just do a million transitions....well I still need to work on sticking to my plans LOL. But what I ended up doing worked really well too.

I kind of accidently got going with a pattern on the circle. Whenever he would come to a pole(there was two of them) I transition him in some way. I tried to vary it, but I couldn't really get him do canter and he started to get confused. So I just did trot and walk transitions. Several times he wanted to come in and I let him stay for shorter and shorter amounts of time. Eventually he started to really ask questions and get the pattern so I brought him in and he licked and chewed a little. A couple of times between the poles when I sent him at the trot he would slow down. What really seemed to work when he did that was to make it clear that when I had to come out of neutral he better be out of there! I'm suprised that this worked because I got big and usually he blows that sort of thing off and ignores it.....
I found it really strange that when I slowed him down the walk he would want to keep trotting sometimes....hmmmmm.....

By the time he was putting effort into the pattern he was staying at the trot for a half lap!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! This is huge for him since a week ago we could only get five steps. Ya know what, I think it was me that was holding him back from maintaining gait because I didn't believe he could do it!!!!!!!! I've sure learned a lot today!

It really was a point to point pattern on the circle without traveling! Because he would get to have a quick check in and rest when he got to the pole. I think if I do this for seven sessions then maybe I can start mixing it up(like when he checks in at the pole I'll ask him to go back to trot instead of walk). I just want to slowly build his willingness by giving him lots of breaks. Last night I prayed that God would give me the open mind to learn. It's been to long since I've really placed my trust in his plan not my own! I think I turned away from him for awhile because things were getting good and for some strange reason I thought I go it alone! I learned I cannot put my faith in ANYTHING but God. Boy! He sure did give me a learning experience!