Thursday, March 22, 2012

Day 1 of Crash course

Caesar and I had a good lesson as far as I am concerned. I started right with round pen work. He started right off at a canter when I pointed and gave me inside turns like I asked. After about 15 minutes we started doing figure eights and he was not the least bit hesitant. I also had him following me. However, he didn't like me on the left side which is the side we normally mount on. He struck out at me with his left front foot when I tried to keep him on that side. So guess what? We stayed working on the left side until he would let me stay on that side without trying to block me. We went right through all the steps in the fundamentals gw through the lunging for stage 1 that was number seven out of 13 steps. He did well at the backup in all four methods. We kinda fell apart on yielding the hindquarters on the right side, but he will get better. It is more me than him. He did pretty good on yielding the forequarters. I will review these all tomorrow, hopefully a little faster and move on to the rest of the gw exercises. Today's lesson took about 2 hours but that was fine with me. This is a crash course as I only have two weeks to figure out and deal with his bucking problem. The left side issue mentioned earlier was either attitude or I was acting like a predator. But I think it was attitude and after working on that side for a time he got better but he still tries to block me some. This might be part of his bucking problem, his unwillingness to totally yield to me on that side. So I know that about him now and will work accordingly. When we were finished I had him follow me around for a few minutes and then rubbed on him. I left him in the pen for about an hour and then gave him access to his food and water.

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