June 18 & 19, 2008 - Swimming and Traveling

June 18, 2008

Sundance

Swimming and Relaxing

I decided to spice up our play session for the day, boy was it fun. I headed out to the yard where the trailer and lake are, and just winged it! I decided we needed to work on maintaining the canter on the 45 ft line, at first he didn't want to maintain it but then I spiced it up with high energy snappy sends, flying changes and running into the lake! He loved taking a splash in the lake, don't take me wrong I wouldn't have minded jumping in myself but I had 2 lessons to teach and didn't need to get nasty but I sure enjoyed sitting there in the soft grass with the cool breeze and watching the deer on the other side of the lake drink the cool spring water. I got tired of sitting there and played a little more with maintaining the canter then we worked on the advanced squeeze game, it is getting SO good! It is so interesting to watch him think, he will sit there and put his head down like he is going to eat grass then he will put his head up then he will blink a lot through the process and repeat, then he will lick his lips. If I do not give him something to do as soon as he is doing, he gets evil thoughts so I have to stay on my toes! We ended the session, but then later on that afternoon we played out in the pasture at liberty. We had TONS of fun and are working up to having him lay down an command, he is going to be great at that because he is so lazy and trustful of me.

Bebe

Advancing, advancing, advancing!

We did some point to point first with the driving game to make sure he was confident enough, then we went to the fence to do our faster sideways. He was so bent to me and calm we were able to trot sideways on both sides without confidence loss! He did SO well! I was so ecstatic! As soon as he got done trotting sideways I left the task alone and let him know what he did was right. Then we played with cantering closer and flying lead changes, I did a snappy send and he squealed! Oh, how cute, confident and happy he was. He did great on that task, so I moved on to introducing him to a new task, prep for trotting sideways on the 45 foot line with me standing still. At the end he wants to face me instead of facing the fence (which isn't a bad thing, but he needs to learn to face the fence and stop.) I won't worry about that much, it just means he is at attention and wants to know what mommy wants him to do! I was so proud of him, he did so well. We did some close contact trotting the circling game at liberty in the pasture while walking back to the barn and ended the session with a kiss and some sweet feed with smiles on both of our faces!

Asking mommy a question

Enjoying the grass

Asking more questions, "Mommy can I eat now?"

June 19, 2008

I am here at the beach, we got on the road last night late and watched Parelli DVD's until 12:00 at night! I watched the Natural Collection DVD and was just overloaded with some great information, I also watched the Parelli Saddling DVD and remembered some points I had forgotten about last time. Now this morning I am watching the Success Series DVD - Beyond the round pen, The seven games at liberty. Why? Because I am starting Level 3 liberty and need all the arrows in my quiver, as many as I can get!