When Nothing is Working,

Official Records Information
Misty 45 minutes 5/9/10 afternoon

In between my two work shifts, I went to the farm. I set up 4 barrels so that there were two barrel race patterns, sharing the two barrels for the first two barrels (if you run in these races, you know what I mean, if not, it was basically two barrels with a barrel on each side of the middle of the two barrels)

Misty came up to me of her own volition. I spent a while putting the halter on (probably 3 minutes) putting on and off to make sure she was not leaving/wanting to leave. I was pleased and put the halter on. . . and promptly took it off, as it was riding right on a wound on her cheek. I had to rethink my plan a bit. I was going to need to do things on line with the rope around her neck that would help me prepare for a bridleless ride without any bridled preparation because I bridle would hurt her, too. I started with going sideways. I was very pleased that her first response when I lifted the stick, she began sidepassing to me. If your horse is going to do something unbidden, it is very nice when it is something positive like coming to you. I worked the kinks out of our side ways until I could have her start going sideways to a barrel and then sideways her back to me again.
Next, I switched to driving in zone 5. She is getting so much better at this. She is responding to me using the carrot stick to influence her front end. To cue her forward, I touch her low on her butt. In order to get her impulsion up, I did point to point driving from barrel to barrel. Misty caught on and after 6 rests, she was chugging right along at the walk. Over all, when I used it, I noticed that her tail driving needs work--I need to spend some time getting it to a MUCH lower phase.

On line: backing with tail needs work
On line: Saddling (! Yucky Stuff!)

Natural Horsewoman Out.