Sunday, May 30, 2010

Ruffian: Circles, and leading by the tail

May 29 2010

This morning I played with Ruffian first. We had a lot of fun. We did some Touch it first. Then we did circles! I kind of realised that recently I haven't been letting Ruffian move enough. Not that would have stopped him if he wanted to but we just were doing smaller things and that isn't enough for Ruffian. So today I made sure that I let him move his feet. I decided to put a purpose to it though. I am going to start asking Ruffian to maintain gait at the canter on the circle. At first he would canter about half a circle and the start trotting so every time he broke gait I would change direction. Pretty soon he was cantered more and more. Once he cantered 1 complete lap I brought him. He had a lick and chew and then off in the other direction. It took a little bit but Ruffian figured out the game and he cantered 2 laps!!! Really good for him.
After that I was going to teach Ruffian to go sideways at a trot but when I asked him to go sideways in front of a fence he got really confused.... he started kicking, rearing etc. At first I thought it was dominance but then to me it looked more like he was confused. So I slowed down and he started going sideways really well. Ruffian can go sideways over almost anything and with out a fence... but we haven't done it with a fence in a long time. So once I slowed it down he caught on and did it really well. Interesting!!
Then we did leading by the tail. Our Online Challenge. Ruffian would back up no problem but he wouldn't go straight so we went to the fence to help with that and I had my carrot stick on the other side ready to help him if he needed any. This really made a difference and we got 5 straights steps. So that was good. After we did that a couple times we ended.

Ruffian stayed around and so I scratched him and then I went to get Prince!

Naturally,
~Keri

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