Lisa Trowse said Fast Track Week 2 day 9 - this morning started with our group playing the hunker down game on buckets. I was quite pleased as I was not moveable (mainly from playing the game with Jack on the end of the rope! ( there is a photo on Ruth Carlyle's wall). It was really good fun and a good exercise to assist with that power position and control and feel of your rope.
I bit the bullet today and went out on my 45 line with Jack. I don't feel comfortable with it still but I will not learn if I don't step out of the zone. And I am so glad I did. Our initial circling went well and I managed to get a good trot going maintaining ten laps in each direction. I then figured I should go along to the change of direction session online to try this on the 45ft. Jack found that I could not move quick enough and decided grass eating was more interesting. Then one of the instructors came to help and my what a gem of knowledge I got. I am aware that jack is often to quick for me, and I find it hard to maintain gait with him especially on the 45ft as he knows I can't get him. But what I learned was that he is off looking at everything else because I just go blah blah blah to him and I lose his respect. Now I have been really working on my neutral, but now I had to be provocative. Every time jack took his eye off me, I had to DO something. Disengage his HQ, tag him and so on. Well the change was almost immediate and his face changed. Mum has teeth and they bite. Once he was listening I could ask for the change of direction but I had to make sure he was tuned in to me, or we would go nowhere. This is something I am using in everything now, I MUST have Jacks focus, ALL the time so that I become his universe.
As I had practised my online I didn't have time to ride this morning and then it was time for the trailer loading demo....and guess who starred!!! Oh yes, let us being in the horse who doesn't like trailers.......Jack!!!! I was excited to watch this with my not so little orange poppet and he did not disappoint. He showed every quadrant in the horsenality chart to the spectators and many different strategies to enable him to have the confidence to go in the trailer. There were many important learning points used and he showed the fine lines that can push him from LB to RB and vice versa. He was handled brilliantly and I was so glad I let him be used as a demo. It took just over an hour for him to finally walk up and get all four feet in being sent from outside. Bless him.
This afternoon we had another session on the seat builders working on relaxation and finding points on our body that tense. Was quite pleased with my movement, and balance point, but it is something I practice with Jack every time I ride in case he has one of his moments.
Onto the afternoon session and I was looking forward to working on my freestyle patterns but it was not to be. We were having a great warm up session practising everything from this morning. I was ecstatic as Jack and I managed ten canter laps on each rein on the 45ft line, and then introduced a log too which he jumped happily as he was cantering round. Whoop di dooo!!!! I was told that this is probably a level 4+ online the way he was going. Anyway, I went to do one more to finish off and scale down and Jack just exploded on the end of the line. RB monster kicked in. He took off at the speed of light and I was a bit concerned as the grass was wet and slippery. I tried all sorts to calm him from pattern interrupt sending energy down the line, he would only disengage momentarily before shooting off again. On the upside I managed to use my power position quite a bit to put into practice what we learned this morning. His back legs slipped out from under him once and he went down, but flew back up and continued to be silly. Finally I got a spark of sanity and was able to implement falling leaf to calm him down off his adrenalin. Decided maybe I wouldn't be riding today!!!
Went off and played with my trot sideway once he was back with me, did some touch it and then saddled up just in time for everyone dismounting. Bit disappointed I didn't get to ride today, but very pleased that I had the explosion on the ground. He appears to lose his confidence out there on the end of the line and if anything triggers then he just goes as he feels on his own. What I need to do is work him past his emotions so that they stabilise and he will have more confidence in himself. Sad to think he still gets so frightened, but it good to know the thresholds so that I can expand them so he doesn't have to go there in the future.
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