Twosox: Extreme Friendly Game... In a different way.

April 28, 2011

This morning I played with Twosox. It was very windy so that in and of itself was an extreme friendly game. Part way through our session the other horses left so I had to help Twosox find relaxation before I finished. We started with some circles as Twosox wanted to move his feet, not in a right brain way though, so we did some traveling circles and falling leaf. Each of these went well and I played with putting more feel on the rope and that really helped Twosox to want to follow the feel instead of fight it.

The last thing I wanted to do was continue with day two of jumping the barrels standing on end. As I was setting them up was then the horses left and so I only had them part up set up when I had to get Twosox left brain again. It turned out good though because we did some squeeze games over the barrels and at first Twosox would jump them in an unconfident state but as he relaxed he found the space between two of the barrels and trotted through instead.

So then I set the barrels up like last time, two standing up and on in the middle but on the other side of the two barrels standing up, so the gap was only about one foot wide. Twosox jumped this no problem and actually jumped the one standing on its end. So I stood all three up and sent Twosox out on the circle. The first two times he jumped them but wasn't completely left brain so he knocked them a bit. The second time he knocked the barrel closest to the fence down but I decided to leave it and see if I could set it up so he jumped the remaining two. And he did! He even though he could have easily jumped the one that was knocked over by the fence he jumped the other two and cleared it no problem.

So I brought Twoosx in and gave him a long rest. He was way more relaxed and confident now so I unhaltered him and he stayed with me for a while before following me over to the gate where I let him out but he stayed with me for a bit. Then I sent him out and he trotted off to find the other horses.

It was so windy so the horses stayed out all day and so I didn't get a chance to play with any of the other horses but I was glad to have the chance to play with Twosox at least.