Prince: Bridling.

January 29 2011

Today our focus was on bridling. Getting Prince to accept the beginning stages of bridling with out even putting the bit in his mouth. At first it was interesting. Prince was subtly avoiding it. He couldn't even accept me holding the bridle in front of him in the position that I would bridle him. So that was where we started.

It took a long time but with a lot of approach and retreat, not releasing on a brace and knowing that pressure motivates and the release teaches, eventually he accepted that step so then we moved on.

Next we played with me being able to hold the bridle like I was going to bridle him and ask Prince to open his mouth, just by putting my thumb or finger on his tongue. This went well so then I would hold the bit loosely and ask Prince to open his mouth. This was the step that took the most time.

Prince would turn his head away just a little bit but I knew that was his way of saying that he wasn't accepting it. So we played with this for a while until I could hold the bit, ask Prince to open his mouth and not have to move his head away and then I would release. That was all I wanted.

Prince doesn't raise his head really high but instead he will lower it. I don't want to discourage that because like Mr. Parelli says "I would rather have a sore back from bridling than a sore neck" But at the same time I know that Prince is avoiding it still so I would just ask Prince to raise his head just a little bit and release then.

I was going to end there but there was honey on the bit so I went over to Twosox to see if he wanted to lick it off. He picked up really quickly what it was and licked it all off which gave me the idea that I should have done that with Prince. So I decided to give it a go.

At first Prince wanted nothing to do with even though I was holding the bit in such a way that I really couldn't have put it in his mouth even if I wanted too but I wasn't going to force it so we continued playing with it and we got to the point where he would touch the edge of the bit but nothing else and he still didn't find the honey. But we kept playing with it until he found the honey and we ended by him licking all the honey off the actual bit and we did that a couple times. It was a really great place to end :)

Naturally,

~Keri