Prince: Preparing...

Oct 22 2010

Today my goal was to prepare Prince for tomorrow, which is the lesson day. We had an amazing playtime and ride which was really nice! We started out in the field and played with our circles. Today I was prepared with a plan and things went really well. Even though Prince started out pulling and wasn't connected we ended with him cantering almost 3/4 of a circle each direction, on the correct leads, and he was connected. It was really cool. The way I got there was by doing a change of direction every time he started pulling. This took a while because Prince wasn't responded to the pressure and was running right through the pressure, like he does at the canter. But eventually he started responded sooner and sooner and he got lighter and lighter. 

So because I was interrupting the pattern each time Prince learned that the pressure meant something and he learned not to just run through it. It took way less time today than it did yesterday and we got better results. Then we did traveling circles at the trot over to the arena. The coolest part was that Prince stayed 100% connected the whole time and the belly of the rope was on the ground the whole time. It was really, really amazing! 

Then I saddled up and we did Figure eights. These to where much better and Prince cantered around the right end and almost all the way around the left end also. He was much lighter and even though he still had some trouble he got it figured out much quicker. We also did some jumping, straddling the logs, sideways, and some other little things and then I mounted up.

We did the Weave again but this time at the walk because Prince was more impulsive and wanted to trot so even though it would have been nice to trot it I knew that we would have more success if we stayed at the walk because Prince wasn't quite as responsive as he was yesterday. He as responding but not as light so we kept it slow. "Slow and right beats fast and wrong". At one point Prince was going into the trot when I put pressure on with one leg (to ask him to turn) so we switched it up bit and I asked Prince to go sideways between the tires. That helped a lot and then we were able to go back to the normal way. 

Up next was cantering. Prince missed one lead to the right and one to the left but then he got them both the next time around and he was so relaxed! He came out of the canter and went into a nice, slow, calm trot. I was impressed!!  After that we did some trot-walk-backup transitions. Prince wasn't responding as well to my seat as I would have liked so we played with them until he relaxed and we got some really nice smooth transitions and I hardly had to use my reins.

We also played with our indirect rein without reins. Prince did really well and was more sure of what I wanted him to do. Then we finished with some Liberty!! 

We started out with some forequarter and hindquarter yields and then we did some yo-yo's, sideways and then circles. I didn't want to do a whole lot of circles because we haven't played in a round corral for a long time so I don't want Prince to think that the round pen is a place that we just do circles. I sent him off and asked him to trot two laps each direction. 

Then we played with changes of directions!! These were fun because I made it a game of tag. Prince was slow and not snappy with the changes so each time he changed direction I tagged behind him, in zone 5, just motivate him to get out of there. After doing that twice our changes of directions completely transformed and we had really snappy, and happy changes of direction. All I had to do was turn, make eye contact and then back up a couple steps and Prince turned and went the other way, with effort! The last one he even cantered!! I couldn't believe the difference! We ended on that one. 

We then did something that I have always wanted to do! We walked all the way from the round corral, through the arena, across the field, through the barnyard and into the pasture where Prince is staying.... totally at Liberty!! I was so proud of Prince. I don't know why but that is something I have always wanted to do and we finally did it!! Prince stayed with me the whole time and even when he saw the ram that he doesn't like in the field next to where we were he looked that way but he didn't leave. 

I feel really ready for tomorrow and I think we are the best we have ever been, of course we can always be better but I think today's playtime and ride was about as good as we could have been today. So I am excited about tomorrow and actually I am not nervous! At least I am not right now ;) I am praying that I won't be nervous at all but we shall have to wait and see what tomorrow brings! 

Naturally,

~Keri