April 11, 2011
This morning when my brother and I went out to feed the horses Prince wasn't so sure he wanted me to be his boss so he tested me in a couple ways... one was that he didn't not want to ask permission to come in and eat his hay. So after waiting for a long while I decided to take the other horses over first and then do Prince afterward, it wasn't really fair to make all the others wait for Prince. So I brought Prince back to the riding ring and after the other three were eating happily I decided to play with Prince a little before taking him back over to his hay.
We played at Liberty and did Figure eights at the walk first. Prince was so connected... which was weird considering his attitude previously. I think part of it was that I wasn't worried about him leaving because I would have expected it. After that we played with jumping a single barrel.
I wanted to make sure I was making it a game so I didn't tell Prince the answer by continuing to line him up with the barrel and etc I allowed him to go past the barrel but sent him with more energy. It took a while but I would just keep re-suggesting it and finally he offered to put his foot on it, which I rewarded because he was starting to think "barrel". Then I backed him up and asked him to jump the barrel and he did and he didn't just jump it but he put effort into jumping it. We ended there and went and this time Prince was more eager to ask permission to come in to his hay. I think I came out the leader with both of our dignity intact :)
Naturally,
~Keri
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