Contentedly Cantering

What a beautiful day it is when you can end it with a settled heart and quiet mind. I believe that everything is just fine and will continue to improve. Blu is doing so well with his cookies and transitions and sideways maneuvers that I can tell he is ready to go to the next step with it. He is increasing his positive reflexes to opposition reflexes ratio and he is getting stickier to me--usually.

Tonight after work I played with Birdy for an hour. She is such a hoot. I built her a little fort and played with the kitty toys with her. She really enjoyed herself. Playing with Birdy helped me feel so happy. I wanted to get right back to her as I was leaving for the barns.

At the barn, I walked down to the arena with my equipment--right past all the horses. Blu was watching intently--somewhat surprised, I think. I put the cookies on the three barrels and waited for Blu. He came down from the top of the paddock, followed by Faith and Cheyenne. He put his head in his halter better than yesterday--still stretching toward it, first, but quickly deciding to put it all the way on.

Blu did circles at the walk, trot, and canter in both directions. I did a few transitions. I decided that tomorrow I will do more transitions to get things more exciting because tonight Blu was a little sticky sometimes. He did maintain the canter at 40' for a lap and a half. Tonight I also kicked one of the barrels out after a while. Time to get more for less!


We also played with sideways, but as I told myself yesterday, tonight we started close and then expanded to the full length of the rope rather than using the whole rope and halving as necessary. We got to 45' away and to with evenness and only a little forward stepping! Another thing, when Blu did not look at me from the barrel, I did not tug or pull--I just got a little closer. By the time we got to 45' he was giving me his attention just by the hinging of the carabiner clip. Oh, it was exciting!


I played with him at liberty for a while and enjoyed some Spanish walk lessons then we did some spins and stick to me. He did 2 spins in a row. It really started to click (we are kind of reminding him on those) with the spins.

He ran off during a stick to me when I asked him to canter. Then I ran with him and when I skidded to a halt, so did he. He then walked off, but it was  better connection he kept with me for a while. I trotted behind him until he began circling me at the trot. He even kept going while I sat down.

You would think that I would end it there, but I took him off and asked for a canter again, then the girls got all worked up and so did he. He gallopped and gallopped all over the place, even after the girls stopped. I just kept on going until he looked at me and trotted to me calmly. Then we went for a walk around the paddock to get him cooled down since he was so winded. I played with laying him down by crouching and tapping his hocks--I think we are on to something there. 

Everything ended so well--I can't wait to get back there. As Birdy sits on my legs, I think it is funny because just this afternoon, that's what I was thinking about her. How contented I must be to have to animal friends I am so ecstatic to be around.

Natural Horsewoman Out.