Session three :)

Wow, it was sure cold this morning and Gingy really felt that!

I came down itched him for awhile then haltered and did some warming up. I'm still working on my sideways, so I tried some separating, isolating, and recombining. His sideways is sure getting a lot better I took him in the RP to do some sideways with the poles and it was awesome. He went sideways across the pole fairly straight and then I even got him to understand that he needed to come sideways back across the pole. All of that when I was ten' away! I thought it was pretty nice!

He's been getting kind of grumpy the last two days I've played with him and I'm still not totally sure what he is trying to tell me....
He might be getting fed up with my ineffective phases, I know it's driving me nuts at least LOL.

We did do that pattern again, but first I had to do an extra warm up on the circle. He had lots of energy because it was so cold this morning, so he went off immediately bucking and galloping for his life! Then he came in and I took that opportunity to take the 22' line off so he didn't trip himself! He had a good run and eventually he settled down into a trot, then came in again. After that I felt like he was ready to focus again.

After his run he was actually pretty slow. Once again he figured out what we were doing and once again I had to reassert him not changing gait. I think the way I was asserting him staying in the trot was good. I still felt like I micromanaged and got to big when it was time for him to stop. So that's probably what he's griping about LOL. Once I figured that out though, I started trying to give him a subtle phase one and then get big only if he failed on that. Wouldn't you know he pretty much stopped failing to stop LOL. The only times he had trouble were when my communication was messed up, so that's a little something to think about. I took to long to reward him again though and that really irritates me that I didn't just floor the brakes and bring him in! He keeps looking for a reward and much as I hate to rely partly on treats, that might be another way of making it enjoyable for him while I learn how to do this.

Sticking with this pattern has definitely been revealing to me and I've even found some relaxation in doing it. When I say relaxation I mean that even though I'm seeing him start to get grumpy I'm able to just take that as feedback and keep going. This pattern couldn't stress consistency to me anymore than it is right now. I was trying everything I could think of to get Gingy maintaining gait but I never stuck with it long enough to get "some" results.

This has been so cool realizing that I can just learn and ask Gingy to forgive all of my silly mistakes. He always does and then he tells me the truth and nothing but the truth LOL. Now I understand that he's not telling me the truth because he doesn't like me anymore he's telling me so we can go forward. That understanding between us is helping tremendously!