Cat Stevens and The Moody Blues

Got out there with Renegade tonight for day 4 of my new online strategy. Everything felt really relaxed. At first, Renegade had some “nasty ears”; he’ll look at me and give me “those ears” when I’ve got him figured out and he’s not winning the games!! At the moment, I’m choosing to ignore them and just continue with what we are doing. Once he understands the game is not changing, his ears come forward and he gets more engaged with me. That’s also when he starts nickering and “chuckling” to me and we had alot of that going on tonight.


We got some really nice walk, trot, and canter circles using my energy and a lift and lead. Had to up phases a couple of times when he didn’t respond, having to kiss or cluck, only once had to roll the stick and string. Also played a bit with up and down transitions; really had fun with that.

After our online play, I went to liberty and Renegade was connected, followed me all over the rp. He was exhuberant when I sent him out on the circle and got a nice, complete canter circle to the left (and that’s his “hard” side). Played with a few COD’s just to see where we’re at and got a couple of pretty nice ones in each direction. Backed all the way across the rp leading by the tail and half way around leading by the ear…we even trotted a few strides and came back to a walk!! Did some STM at walk, trot, and canter in both directions; to the left was better than to the right (my hard side) but both were a great starting point.

UDT after play was nice and soft. It took about 15″ for Renegade to decide to lay down but when he did he stayed down quite a bit longer than he has previously…long enough for me to get a cookie out of my pocket and give it to him. I thought the cookie might cause him to get up to get it, but he chose to stay down until after I gave it to him. He likes to suck on his cookies and a bit of his tongue protrudes so I gently touched it, he then started licking me so we had a game of lick, touch, stroke the tongue. When I stopped, he came back for a second round of the game!!

Tonight’s music selection was Cat Stevens and The Moody Blues…think he likes them too!!