Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Day 26

Have you ever had one of those days where it seems everything goes backwards? I know you have. Well, last evening it was that way for me. You may recall in my last post I said that I had Raven leg yielding toward me a few steps. It has been 3 days since I worked with her and thought that was a nice rest for her. So I went to work with her in the invisible pen and worked on the basics just to see how she was feeling and how soft she would be. She did good so I decided to work on some of the tasks, kinda putting them together. She was doing fine with the halter on because It was easy to stop the forward movement or her from running off. So I took it off and tried the walking toward me as I backed away. I even got her trotting toward me and leg yielding by moving the air beside her. She did real good. So I tried the leg yield away from me, without halter and she kept interpreting that as me wanting her to move off. I tried several times, even putting her face to the fence I just couldn't get it. So I went back to the halter and let the rope get to the end as I LY her. I tried again without it with the same results. On the other hand I did get her LY toward me the length of the fence. She does better on her left side than her right, but that has been the same with everything. I decided to move on to other things so I had her doing transitions walk trot canter and back to walk and stop. She does good at those.
I got in the saddle and worked on some spins, using things I learned at the expo. That was good we were drilling some holes with the inside hind. We did alot of cantering around working on softness and stops and transitions with my seat and turns with my legs. We worked on trotting on correct diagonal and asking for canter in correct lead and so on. But now it was pretty much dark and she was all sweaty so I just walked her worked on various exercises at the walk and then quit.
All in all it wasn't too bad, but I was hoping for alot better progress without the halter.
Sometimes that is the way life is though. You expect one thing and get another. James 1 reminds me to count it all joy when there are various trials in my life because of what they produce in my life, like patience. But I can learn from the trials and back off an debreif myself as to what was going on and what I need to learn from the situation. I think this taught me that I need to just go slower and more gentle and I will get more of a positive outcome. I actually had found myself getting angry with Raven because she wasn't doing what I wanted, but the real problem was me. I wasn't communicating as clearly as I should have. Oh well. I am glad she is so forgiving..
So my advice is the next time things aren't going as planned, take a step back, a deep breath and go slower and see if you get a better outcome.

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