Day 10

Yesterday I had a brief opportunity to work with Raven. Sometimes only having a short period of time to do something forces you to focus your efforts on specific things. In this case, I stuck completely with the tasks for the 3rd level course. So I took about 15inutes with the ground work mvoing through the tasks I knew. Task 1 is draw horse to rest spot from a trot. That is having horse trot around pen and then by your body language and movement asking him to stop and face  you or even better walk towards you. Raven does that well. Task 2 is million dollar move which is described as briefly as while being in front of the drive line of the horse, disengage his hindquarters and then ask his shoulders to move over changing sides. So you move from the right side to the left side or vice versa. Raven does this fine.  there are two more tasks in round pen that I haven't worked on and will which helps to prepare the horse for ground driving. The ground school tasks 1. leg yeild sideways on circle we do fine. 2. progressive desensitization through movement which is moving sideways on circle you flag a horse out, we do this fine. 3. 1/2 balanced turn -change sides-move shoulders from drive line. This is using a lead line standing to the side at the drive line facing his hip, with lead in outside hand and flag in inside hand you move to the outside of the triangle while he crosses outside front foot in front of inside front foot. We do this fine. 4. is a completed balanced turn on center the same as before but starting from behind the drive line and bringing the front foot across and then changing sides and moving shoulders all the way around for a complete turn. We do this fine. 5. move shoulders with a flag. This is from a stand still in front of the drive line pushing the shoulders over the feet crossing in front of the other. we do this fine too.The last two are ground driving which we haven't done yet.
I did all this and more in about 15 minutes of ground work yesterday. But remember it took lots of hours to get to that point. These are simple warmup exercises for me now.
In the mounted tasks number 1 is back 3 steps and move shoulders 90 degrees, do it both directions. No problemo for her. 2. is move shoulders 180 degrees, no problem again. 3. at a walk, stop without touching reins, she does fine. 4. at trot, stop without touching reins, she does this fine. We keep working on this to refine it more.
In the mounted refined the tasks are 1. walk trot and back transitions using just seat and legs, with vertical flexion. fine. 2. ride a figure eight with vertical flexion at a trot post on correct diagonal changing shape and our diagonal on the straight part of the pattern. We haven't worked on this alot but I would rate myself a 4 or 5. 3. complete a balanced turn on center we do this no problem. 4. stop with vertical flexion from walk. Ok. 5. stop and back 3 steps with VF maintaining VF. We are ok at this. 6. Stop with VF from trot, no problem. 7. Disengage 180 degrees, back 3 steps move shoulders 180 degrees maintaining VF. We can do this but it still needs work, probably a 5 or 6 on this one. 8. is using another rider to work with and I don't have that.
I worked most of these yesterday in the 45 minutes I had and did okay. I need to do the ground driving and work on the mounted tasks more.
have a good day!