June 4, 2010

Sonny & I played for 2 hours today. I wish I could've stayed longer, but I had a doctor's appt.
He didn't come and catch me at the gate, in fact I had to walk to within 15 feet of him before he'd come to me. Also-neither Jasper the donkey or Justin (another horse) came to meet me either, and they are usually right there in my face to get a cookie. How interesting......
Sonny and I played stick to me walking in the pasture to the gate, not as well as yesterday, but fairly well. We went straight to the roundpen and worked on maintain gait at the circle. He did very well, this is improving nicely. He was able to pick up a soft canter when asked, and maintained it untill I either asked him to go down to trot, or brought him in,,,of course since this was only the 2nd day and 2nd session of a soft canter when asked, I didn't prolong it. I think the longest I let him go was a lap and a half. Such a big improvement from less than 2 months ago when he would get emotional and take off in a head tossing , bucking snit most of the time when I asked for a trot. Yay!
We also worked on liberty in the roundpen and that went fairly well. I realzied that we needed to 'learn' the stop and back up better online before trying for it at the trot at liberty. 4 feet on a pedestal is becoming an easy task for us. He let me hold up a foot for 20 seconds with the savvy string (thanks to instructor K at the April course), and we did weave at the trot, but not as well as yesterday.
7 Session list:
4 feet on pedestal-session 3
weave at trot -session 2
hold up foot w/ ss -session 1
pick up soft canter-session 2
online stick to me at trot on a rail-session 0
traveling circles at trot-session 2
sideways facing a wall/rail-session 2

Not good enough to put on session list yet:
change of direction at trot
figure 8 at trot (see a big connection here???? )
play on 45' line
move hindquarters toward me on a mounting block

I think that's it for today.
Keep it savvy.
Fay