Prince: Spins, straddling the jump, and sideways towards me.

Prince and I had so much fun today! I trimmed Twosox this morning so I was pretty tired and didn't really feel like going out and playing but it was really warm out and I knew that I should. So out I go to play with Prince. At first we played at Liberty a little. We did some spins, Touch it (standing on the pedestals while I was about 15ft away!) and some other stuff. Then I haltered Prince while I was on my knees. He did really well with that. Normally Prince won't keep his head low very long but today we kept with it and it didn't take long before Prince kept his head low and was patiently waited for me to halter him.

After that we went up to the riding ring. We did some Stick to me first and then we were going to play with our change of directions but then I changed plans and decided to play around with straddling the jump. There was a pole that was on top of two stacked tires and the other end was on the bottom rail of the fence. So it made the perfect jump to teach Prince to straddle something. The first couple tries Prince jump flew right over it but after a couple jumps Prince started to see that it was a different puzzle so he started trying different things. I was surprised at how in tune Prince really was with me because if I dropped my energy to soon he would stop right in front of the jump and look at me like "Why am I stopping?" So it took a couple tries to get it all right but pretty soon (less than 10 minutes) I could see that Prince was getting really close to figuring out the puzzle. A couple times he would walk over it part way but it was still what I wanted do he got a rest then we tried again. Prince did an almost perfect one and so I was going to stop there because he had jumped and stopped but it almost went over completely but stopped so I was going to stop there but decided to try one more time and this time Prince did it perfectly! He jumped it part way and stopped and didn't move an inch! It was beautiful! All I did was drop my energy and I didn't even need to use the rope! It was incredible!

We after that. I asked Prince to come sideways towards me and then I took the halter off. Prince didn't leave though. He just stayed with me so we walked over to the gate and I then he left. When I got back down to the corral Prince came over to me again and it was really cute because he climbed right up on the pedestal with all four feet and then stopped and asked me a question! It was so cool!! Then Prince followed me over to the fence and we spent a little bit of time together there before I left. I am really glad I went out even though I was really tired. It was a lot of fun :)

Naturally,
~Keri