March 6 2010
This afternoon I had an interesting play time with Prince. There were a couple things that I wanted to play with and one was doing spirals on the circle (Increasing and decreasing the circles) so I took the 45ft line up with me. Before we went up to the riding ring I did a little bit of leading by the tail, I am teaching Prince to make turns also. So that is fun! Prince is slowly getting the idea!
I think the first thing that I did wrong was that I started off to quickly without doing some smaller things with Prince first. I went right to Figure eights and while that would have been okay normally this time we were on the 45ft line and I asked Prince to canter them. So I didn't get Prince properly prepared and in a learning frame of time before I started that. Oops. Well you live and learn! Then we did come circles. My mom was video taping and when I was watching the video I counted that Prince did at least 20 circles and only broke gait a couple times (once was down to the walk and a couple times he started cantering) So that was really good because I never remember to count when I am doing circles with Prince... I always seem to have something else on my mind ;) I think that our play time would have gone a lot better if I had of started off right but I didn't and so now I will have to go back and fix a lot of things.
Before I played on the 45ft line today I knew that I wouldn't be able to give Prince all of the rope (not even half of it really) but I thought I would try again and see if I would be able to keep the rope away from my feet and have fun with the extra little bit of rope. Well Prince did enjoy the extra room but the rope kept getting caught around my feet. Our riding ring isn't wide enough to let Prince have even half of the 45ft line so it would end up all around me. It got to a point where I got frustrated because I was trying to focus on Prince and getting him connected to me again and then the snow was slippery and the rope was tripping me up. I wasn't frustrated at Prince but I know he felt that I was frustrated and it effected him. So I switched to the 22ft line and because of all that our change of directions, which were really, really good before today are not... well lets just say we are almost back to square one again. Instead of Prince responding to me when I ask for a change of directions he gets faster and faster. I think it is more of a RBE response. I don't think he is being dominate *sigh* I am more frustrated at myself then anything.
I felt our change of directions at the point where at the walk and when Prince was trotting slowly he would change direction. Another things I noticed was that Prince would always cantered off after the change of directions. So I taught him to stay in the gate that he was in before I asked for the change of direction. It was interesting. We did some really nice canter to halt then back to the canter again transitions though! We also did some traveling circles at the canter, sideways, jumping (Prince offered to jump a single barrel a couple times! One was from a walk too!)
After that I got on and rode. I had tied the 22ft line into reins but forgot that it was supposed to be tied around the part of the fence where a board it broken. So when Prince saw the gap he headed straight for it. I directed him away though before we got to it. Prince wasn't happy about that and decided that every time that I asked him to go forward he would buck a little. So I decided to get off, fix that on the ground and then get back on. After I got back on everything went smoothly. Prince was seemed to forget about the fence and we did some sideways, some really nice transitions (trot,walk, halt, backup, trot, and so on) Prince was super light the whole time! After that I asked Prince to trot one way, then stop, pivot half a circle and then trot the other way. Prince did really well with that and seemed to get the hang of it.
Since things were going really well. We did some savvy string riding. We did transitions, point to point, sideways and some other things. All with out touching my reins! We ended after I asked Prince to stand on the pedestal with all four feet, and I stood on him. Since the snow in melting the pedestal is slowly getting higher and higher. Plus some of our toys are getting uncovered! Yippee! I do so love spring!
Prince stayed with me for a while before he left. We did a little bit of stick to me at Liberty too. So lots to think about that's for sure!
Until next time,
Naturally,
~Keri
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