Lisa Trowse said Fast track week 4 day 17 - well today jack well and truly tested my leadership on every level. He tried it on from the moment I walked in the stable. I had to reestablish my space in the stable when skipping out and at the door. I had to reestablish my space at the water trough and leading. Then he didn't want to go back in the stable so we had to have a discussion about that too.
We started this morning with some fantastic simulations in the precision pen. It was great fun but also really good for learning finesse and precision riding, with focus on separating your body to work in different ways to influence the movement of the horse and communicate effectively. Excellent.
Jack then came out to play. He was full of head tossing and shaking. LBE for this session. Managed to get cooperation online with some strategies I have learned, but when he went onto the 45ft he knew he was out of reach and was lightning fast at spinning and running in the other direction, or snatching grass and then shooting off. So we went back on the 22 to give me more leadership.
Into the saddle and I warmed up much stronger today and he stood for mounting. Started off really well and he was really thinking backwards. BUT then he decided he didn't want to play anymore and wouldn't move or fought to come off the fence. Spent ages doing hindquarter disengagements and trying to get his mind. Had to be effective with the carrot stick in the end, which takes his confidence a bit, and mine as he gets all worried. We went off to play with the bullseye pattern and finished relatively intact.
Classroom sessions and preparations for the exam tomorrow were followed by an afternoon playing on the bits you need to polish with your horse. Jack was soooooo argumentative. If I sent left he would go right, if I said stop he would go, and when I was saddling and warned him about eating grass and got into my position to enable me to be effective a slow, targeted front hoof was aimed sneakily in my direction. Little so and so!
However when walking over to mount, he had a scare as he went to bite a fly on his chest and he bit the savvy string and it caught in his mouth and as he lifted his head he got trapped. Thank goodness for him learning not to fight pressure, as I put my hand on his neck to calm him I was able to flex his head to remove it from his mouth nice and easy.
Managed some reasonable point to point , and at one time there was a bit of a commotion as a horse got loose and came galloping our way, and he remained calm though I did dismount for safety. Remounted and finished what we were doing.
When we returned to the stable yard the highlight was me managing to back jack in through the door. He was not overly happy and I had to balance his I don't want to, with his confidence as he went a little RBI too. But he did it and after quite a challenging day it set us up for tomorrow. I have had enough of these tests to know that we are likely to play better the next day as it is his way of keeping my measure as leader. Tiring though it may be it usually means we are about to make a breakthrough and move forward. Just in time for the assessments on thursday would be good....!!!
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