Prince: Small things...

November 11 2010

Well Prince and I played for the first time in our riding ring in over three weeks. We kept things simple and small. We played with our forequarter and hindquarter porcupine yields, getting them back up to where they were at the lesson. Prince did well. He finds one side easier and so we focused more on the other side. Sometimes I still have a hard time seeing if Prince is putting enough speed into it but it is getting easier and I think we are getting it. 

Then we played with sideways at a trot. Before we try it by using the porcupine game we are going to get it through a normal sideways game (driving game style). I decided to try sending Prince out at the trot, ask him to trot around me and then when he was almost up to the fence I would push him sideways. We got couple nice steps of sideways at the trot so we quit on a good note. One thing that I noticed that Prince has improved on is that he can now go sideways, confidently at a faster pace at a walk and stay straight. So that is an improvement!! 

Up next was backing up in a circle. Prince caught on fairly quickly but it still took a bit of time for him to figure it out. At first he was a little to far away for me to properly help him if he got stuck so I brought him in closer so I could help him if he needed it. We got one lap which was pretty good. I am aiming for 1-2 laps with me in neutral... it might take a while but we will continue picking away at it. 

One thing that I found hard to do was to go back to neutral or a phase 1. Then let Prince stop or make a mistake then correct or help him. So I have to be more aware of that. Because if I don't then Prince will not learn and I will be micromanaging at a phase 2. 

We ended with the first step for us towards holding Prince's tongue. First I need to get him to accept my fingers in his mouth. Right now he doesn't like it so much. So I just kept them in there until he stopped trying to get them out and then I took them out and repeated the whole process. Prince caught on pretty quickly and by the end he was accepting them. Not totally but we are getting there!!

Then we just hung out for a bit before I let him go. It was nice to keep it simple and play with some smaller things that we can do in our riding ring. 

Naturally,

~Keri