Callie day 6 and others

What a day. Callie was just great today. I got him in the pen and didn't even have to work him that much to know that he was going to stick with me and give me some good tries. I went through several of the exercises there real quick to see how he would do at liberty with all of it. It was good. I flagged him out and no problem. His bobbing of the head has diminished considerably. Then I took him to the back and saddled him and then out on field doing the gw exercises. I added a dog, my german shepherd, Prinz. He adds some increased intensity to the situation and I gotta say that Callie did fine. He was distracted but would come back to me with just a nudge. Today I introduced him to spurs too. He was rather dull on YH from saddle and moving his shoulders so I added the spurs. And boy did that wake him up. I also found this horse has a faster speed than plodding along. Prinz added the dynamic there. In fact, we used him like a cow and chased him all over the place. I was trying to move away from using the rein for direction and using my leg and seat. He is starting to catch it. I worked a lot on bending exercises with him at the walk and trot. I had no problem with the gas pedal today.
On another note, I started two Arabians today also. One Robbie a 9 yr old gelding, all black and the other one was Darkstar a 14 yr old black gelding. Both beautiful horses. There feet need some work but we have to get them to the place where they can be easy for the farrier.
Robbie I spent 30 minutes rd penning. The problem was that it is a 60' x 90' arena cut off at the corners. It worked but I could not get him in a good canter the whole time, so it mostly an extended trot, which he has a real nice one. I had him changing directions pretty good to the inside, in fact he was pretty much making me the center of the arena. I wanted to move on at  a certain point so I have another day to work in the arena. I desensitized him to the lead rope and stick and string and then had him yielding hindquarters. It didn't take him long to figure that out. He is somewhat pushy he tried to run into me a time or two but that was quickly taken care of. I also worked on the back up which he did as good as was expected. We capped it off with working on Yielding his forequarters. He did pretty good for not having worked in years more than likely. I am looking forward to see more of his personality and how he handles everything else.
Darkstar on the other hand was alot more reserved and protective. I had to round pen him for 50 minutes and he still didn't really hook on to me. I had to find a good place to stop rd penning him. He doesn't like me on his left side so I when he gave me two eyes on that side I let him stop. I had much trouble with him trying to get him to turn to the inside consistently but I ran out of time on this section. I did move on to desensitizing to lead and stick and string. Then worked on the YH which he took to real fast. We ran out of time so we will pick it up tomorrow. One thing I noticed about him is that he didn't like to lead very well, but by the end he was following me pretty good. Once he realizes I can move his feet in any direction I want he will come along nicely. I think these horses are going to make some nice horses to ride. Stay tuned for tomorrows results.