Sunday, December 12, 2010

Prince: Playing with a lot of things... and maybe to much for one session.

December 8 2010

I think the title pretty much sums up what I learned from this session. That it is very important to find a balance and not to to much is one session. Prince and I had a great session but at the end I really noticed that both him and I were de-motivated. Prince was doing what I asked but he wouldn't put much effort into it at all. 
Here is what we did...

We did some zone 5 driving with one line. This winter I want to play more with Prince pulling sleds and such. So today we played with maintaining gait at the trot for longer periods of time instead of doing transitions and such. Prince did well and we did big circles at the one end of the arena.
Next we played with our yo-yo's. My goal was lightness and speed to the end of the 22ft line. We took it in a couple stages but in the end Prince got it and it went really well. Prince backed up to the end of the 22ft line with lightness and speed, which was what I was aiming for. Now hopefully we shall be able to maintain that standard :)

We also did Figure eights at the trot from 22ft away, jumping a single barrel (we played clearing the jump which meant Prince putting more effort into jumping), and leading backing up by the tail, which was interesting because Prince will put a lot of effort into backing up when we are doing stick to me, yo-yo's etc but he will go rather slowly when I ask for him to back up by the tail. I just haven't required him to do it any faster... until now. I asked for more speed and at first he wasn't sure he wanted to but, thanks to the newer/cleaner ropes carrying a really good feel, I was able to reinforce what I was asking and he caught on pretty quickly ;)

The last thing we played with was friendly game in Prince's ears, he doesn't like me touching inside his ears, not deep of course. So we played with that because I know that it will effect our bridling if Prince resists the bridle going over his ears, which he doesn't mind the halter doing but it is something that I didn't want to just leave. So we played with that and got that going fairly well. I will keeping playing with it and hopefully, somehow get Prince to even enjoy me massaging his ears :)

Naturally,
~Keri




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