Day 6 of the On-Line Patterns

By golly, the patterns work! They say by day 5 or 6, your horse will make a change. Today was our sixth session working on level 1 touch it and figure eight. She made a significant change in touch it by day three. Figure eight took until today to really make the change. I have really been focusing on slowing things down for my right brained introvert. The level one task of a 12 foot line (shorter than I am used to lately) and at the walk (slower than I normally do...) has been great for both of us. I have really been focusing on doing level one with excellence, and going back to "kindergarten" has really opened my eyes to the holes that we have.

I used to think that our figure eights were okay, but I was really just micromanaging her through the turns and edging her one to keep up her momentum. Through our first 4-5 sessions of playing with this pattern, I really focused on quality, not quantity. So sometimes, we didn't get a full figure eight. If we got half a pattern with quality, I was happy with that. Yesterday, I started asking for more, but was still pushing too much with the stick to keep her going. Today I warmed up with 7 games, and worked some weave. Her send was sticky/slow, so I isolated that for a while to get a quality send at the WALK. A gait that is good to focus on for both of us! It is so easy to send her at the trot, since that gives her more momentum, but I really needed to step back and slow things down and get a quality walk first.

Once I had that going, then we moved into the figure eight. I found myself wanting to micromange her into the second turn of the figure eight, because she would start to slow down. In anticipation of her stopping, I would pick up my stick and push her onward. Finally, I told myself that I needed to let her uphold her responsiblities (maintain gait and pattern) and just TRUST her. By golly, it worked! She gave me some really great, soft, albeit SLOW figure eights. Soft eye, willing expression, no interest in the lucious grass... A great place to stop. We ended by doing a few touch-its. Ted (our barn owner) was there, and I was showing him what we've been working on. He was quite impressed that I could focus on a certain poop pile, and have her put her nose on it!!!! Kind of blew his mind that I could influence her in that way :)

I look foward to day seven of our program tomorrow. Then I can start working on the level two online tasks--longer lines, more responsibility. It will be great!