Tuesday's work

I got Raven out and worked with her yesterday. We already know the fundamentals GW and as those same components are used in the upper level exercises I decided to just reinforce backing up and leading beside. Then we moved on to the intermediate level of GW and went through 1-11 of the exercises all of these she does pretty good. I don't have time to explain them all now but they go from changing sides of the horse without moving your own feet and doing it with softness to sidepassing on the fence (which she does without the fence. I even sidepass toward me), leading behind which is me at one end of the lead and the horse on the other end and I walk away from her. She should stay right with me and match my gait, walk, run/trot, etc without me having to pull on the lead rope. She should even back up when I back up. The last one I worked on was turn and go, which is where I stand next to her head, flip the lead over her head and rump around her hocks and ask her to turn in the direction of the pressure which means she will turn away from me following her nose and then swing around in front of me to the same position she was in when we started. It took about 45- and hour to do all of these then we started riding. I always flex alot at the beginning then we worked on bending and transitions from a walk to trot to walk. Then vertical flexion at standstill and walk then a trot. I then worked on yielding the hindquarters and forequarters. We did a few haunches in and out and leg yields with softness also yielding hindquarters and bringing front end through which is the million dollar move of Dennis Reis. Then worked on bending with vertical softness too. We sidepassed and half passed from a standstill without the fence which is exercise #15 (actually his is on the fence) and we did the draw to a walk transitions which is #17 and the last one on his list in the intermediate course. I finished up with flexion and we were done. This took about an hour and a half. It is easy to put alot of time in when you are following this plan but it is necessary to get where I want to go in my horsemanship. There are other exercises that I need to work on with her that we haven't done yet, but I think it will be in a week or so and we will be in the advanced level. Some advanced we already know. I also need to bring Jacob up to speed on these things as well. I am waiting until his foot is good and healed though.