Prince: The Circling Game - Isolate, separate and recombine.

March 7 2011

Prince and I had a really interesting session this afternoon. We got a big dump of snow again so the riding ring was safe to play in once again. It has been a while since we played up there!!

We started with some liberty in the corral. We played with stick to me with my hand on Prince's mane. We started at the walk and then moved on to the trot when the walk was going well. We did about 9ft circles at first then we got smaller and smaller. Prince did really well. Once the walk and trot were going well we tried the canter! We got 1/2 a lap at the canter!!!! It was so incredible!! Prince was connected and I could feel that he wasn't thinking about leaving or drifting away. He was with me!!

I went out planning to play with our Figure eights but pretty quickly I found out that we needed to play with our circles first. I knew that it wouldn't be setting up for success to try and fix everything at once so we started with the send. At the walk and trot it was okay, though not great, and since I wanted to play with Figure eights at the canter I knew that we would need to get our send on the circle at the canter better... much better. So off we went.

First was the back up. That part was definitely broken. Well maybe not broken because Prince would back up but it wasn't to the standard that we were playing at, Prince was putting just enough effort in to make it look like he was putting effort, which he really wasn't.

So after our yo-yo's was better we went onto the next part of the send. It only took a couple sends and re-sends before Prince cantered off at a phase one and maintained gait at the canter for a whole lap so I brought him in. We weren't playing with the allow but I knew that the allow would show how good the send was.

We then moved on to the left. This way was harder for Prince he would canter off okay but then he would break gait. So we played with this for a while trying different things. We played the game "Don't make me pick up the stick" and that got Prince more interested but he was still having a hard time maintaining the canter. Then I remembered something Mr. Pyne said at the lesson I had with him back in November. He said that I was putting to much pressure on Prince at the send.

Now as I thought about this I think the thing is this, I needed to put more pressure on Prince when he wasn't trying very hard so that he would try something but once he started getting more interested and engaged, though still not getting it quite yet, I needed to give him a longer chance to figure it out without having as much pressure on him. So the next time I sent Prince I didn't "tag" behind him when he went off on the circle. I still wanted the canter and asked for it through the energy in my body but I didn't have to use my carrot stick.

This time Prince went off at the canter and cantered a whole lap, then I brought him in. It was great!! The look on Prince's face was incredible! He was engaged!!

So in playing with our send our allow and bring back got better. We did play with our bring back a little because Prince wasn't actually disengaging. So we got that snappier and Prince was disengaging at the end.

We never did get to play with Figure eights but I know that this was a major ingredient to having better Figure eights. One other thing we played with earlier in the session, and through out the whole session was that I waited until Prince asked me a question before I asked him to go out on the circle. This way I could tell (1) if he was interested (2) if he was still processing (3) if he was ready to take new instructions. At the end he was asking loads of questions because I waited in the beginning.

It was a really great session and I learned a lot. Hopefully once spring gets here and everything is less icy and wet we can really get progressing again.

Naturally,

~Keri