Twosox: Time to advance.

April 22, 2011

This morning Twosox and I had a great session. It was kind of unexpected as I was planning on playing with Prince first and then Twosox but Twosox came over to me and I had to give him his supplements anyway so I played with him first. And then Prince and Ruffian left so I didn't actually get to play with Prince after all. But Twosox and I had a amazing session and had so much fun!

We played with Figure eights and those went really well. Twosox had the rhythm, relaxation and connection and maintained gait around the ends also. I was really impressed! Then we played with cantering on the circle and got some incredible canter transitions and Twosox cantered almost a complete circle more than once! It was a relaxed canter, the best that I have ever seen!!

I soon realized that Twosox was definitely in a learning frame of mind and if I didn't teach him something new he would loose interest and motivation. So I decided to try jumping barrels there where standing on end. We have done this before but Twosox wasn't mentally connected and it would just keep getting worse because Twosox felt way to much pressure. I didn't set it up and wait and I didn't set things up for success.

This time I was going to set it up for success. I started with two barrels standing up and one laying down in the middle. Twosox jumped that no problem so then I moved the two barrels that were standing up closer together and put the other barrel, still on its side, in front of them so there was a smaller gap but still a barrel there. Twosox jumped it so problem and actually jumped higher than the standing up barrels. I wanted to make sure that Twosox was truly confident jumping these barrels though so I set it up so that the barrels were in his way a couple more times and he jumped it each time.

So then I set up all three barrels standing up and off we went. Because I didn't want Twosox to think it was about the barrels I sent him on the circle and walked away from the barrel then slowly walked back towards them. Twosox calmly trotted up to the barrel and jumped over them with not even the slightest amount of hesitation! Of course Twosox got a long rest afterward :)

We basically ended there but we played with some ground tying and Twosox caught on really quickly. I had to go down to the house to get the camera and he stayed exactly where I left him and didn't move the whole time. He learns so quickly!!

Prince and Ruffian did end up coming back but I didn't have enough time to play with Prince as I had to get ready for work but it was really nice to be able to have a longer session with Twosox and we both had so much fun!!

It really is an amazing feeling when you set your horse up for success!!

Naturally,
~Keri