Sunday

Started with the squeeze game to come up next to me to help me mount her. She got the concept with me on the left side but had problem understanding the game on the other side. I made sure it wasn't me who solved the puzzle for her and just set it up and waited. Finally she got it on both sides. She wasn't at all grumpy today, maybe because I didn't have my saddle. I will find that out tomorrow.

Set it up for success

Saturday

This weekend I have two goals. To get her deeper in the pond and to have her accepting me mounting her. Today she offered to go in the pond on the 45" line. After that big effort I took her to the shower and we played friendly game with the hose. She starts to get the hang of it and is no longer afraid.

Isolate, Separate and Recombine

Day 10

Last day of week two. My horse had bad mounting today and pinned her ears and tried to bite and kick me. I thought it was me being less smooth than what she needed but I spoke to Rob about it and he thought it was her attitude about the whole thing that needed changing. Again, we are not preparing the colt for us but for the customer. So the horses has to learn to have some tolerance. As long as the horse is not scared he should consider it as extreme friendly game. By the end of the day we mounted again and started to do some guiding with the indirect and direct rein.

Attitude of justice is effective

Day 9

Rob showed us in a demo how you can spice up the squeeze game and to set it up for the horse to solve the puzzle instead of us. He demonstrated how to be particular without being critical. In the afternoon we repeated the pattern and mounted up in the round pen again. Huge difference in the horses (and humans)! Rob had us moving along as a unit and the horses were in much more harmony. Great day!

The process never looks like the product

Day 8

My horse greeted me this morning. We are starting to get a strong relationship and she looks for me to go do something. We played in the playground with the saddles on and kept checking our pre flight checks really thoroughly to make sure we had not overlooked anything. In the afternoon, we went in the round pen and mounted our horses. This was it. You can never be to sure about how they will react. Will the preparation be enough that you have put in them or not? Rob moved the herd around and we all got a closer look at how the horses were feeling, being in the middle of everything! All the humans were pretty much on their toes and we tried our best singing a song or whistle to make our muscles relax. All we were supposed to do was just being a passenger. This exercise was an emotional roller coaster. One second being terrified to the next singing along and laughing with the others. The horses calmed down and so did the humans and we all ended the ride on a happy note.

Pressure motivates and the release teaches