November 11th playtime

November 11 2009

Twosox and I had an interesting playtime this afternoon. We started out in the corral and I played around with Twosox's feet. I kind of simulated trimming his feet. He did very well. Stood perfectly still the whole time. That was REALLY nice!!

After that we went up to the riding ring to play. We started off with some Stick to me and circles. Twosox was doing really well on the circle. We did some Change of directions and Transitions also. He  was in tune with me the whole time. Then something happened that changed our whole playtime..... my mom put the scary Twosox eating tarp down.... a couple months ago we tied a tarp in the tree so that it would kind of be like a carwash. Well Twosox was positive that it was going to eat him. Since he was on the circle he started getting really rather impulsive so I quickly spotted two barrels and we switched to Figure eights. I must say our Figure eights have never been to good!! But of course Twosox has never been so scared. We kept doing the Figure eights until Twosox relaxed and started paying more attention to me. It took a while but finally Twosox started lowering his head and his movements softened. So I kept with it until I knew he had relaxed some then we stopped.

I have never seen Twosox so scarred. We were taking a rest and then Twosox lowered his head, I thought “Good! He is relaxing “ Then I looked again and Twosox was going catatonic!!!! If there is one thing that scares me, it is a horse that is going [or gone] catatonic!! It is because I feel that I don't have enough savvy to deal with it... or prevent it. Since Twosox hadn't gone totally catatonic I softly started moving him around just so that he wouldn't go there. We started doing squeezes between me and the tarp. It was like a 25ft gap between me and the tarp and Twosox was still really worried about it. So I kept backing off, and making the space bigger until Twosox could confidently walk through it. Then I slowly made the space smaller.

Then we went and did some Stick to me. Twosox was glued to me!!! He would do exactly what I did! It was neat!!! We were going along the fence and then I noticed that Twosox's head went up. So we stopped and backed up. Twosox lowered his head. So we stopped there and had a big rest. Twosox fell asleep and totally relaxed. Very good sign!! I kind of ignored Twosox for a while because I was helping my mom with Knightly. It turned out good because that way there was no pressure on Twosox.

After a while we went over to the gate and I let Twosox go. It was a very interesting playtime to say the least. I know exactly what I will be playing with next time I play with Twosox!!! It will be interesting to see how he responds!

~K