Day 1: Played with the rein concepts and Renegade was assuming every time I picked up the reins that he had to start moving or doing “something” and not waiting for any direction or input from me. I backed up and played the friendly game with the reins until he understood that me picking up the reins meant he should get ready for something but wait until I indicated what that “something” was. It didn’t take him long to start asking questions and not assuming he needed to move. Once we had this clear, I decided to just do some FTR at walk and trot, trying not to touch the reins unless absolutely necessary and we did great; we did two laps to the left at walk and two at trot without me having to touch the reins. To the right we did 1-1/2 laps when I had to pick up the rein when Renegade decided he wanted to take a shortcut across the round pen!! Doing this took up the bulk of our play session so I didn’t get to play with the new rein concepts but this was time well spent!!
Day 2: Played with reinforcing the friendly game with the reins and it took about ½ the time for Renegade to start asking questions instead of assuming…ha ha…progress!! Once Renegade started asking questions, we did some FTR then moved on to moving the fq and moving the hq using a refined direct and indirect rein and we did pretty well. We got two fq steps to the right and back to the left without forward or backward movement. Moving the hq was not quite as smooth; I think Renegade was confused so we’ll have to work on this in another session. Once we finished with this I decided to try a 10 meter circle, first at the walk and then at the trot. It went really great!! We did two circles to the left at the walk and trot and Renegade’s trot was so even and soft, I was able to post to it…first time ever – he’s usually really stiff on the circle. To the left we did almost 2 circles before we both lost our focus. Renegade wasn’t quite as soft and even going to the right and neither am I…something else to work on in another session.
Day 3: Our back up is broken!! I guess I’ve put too much emphasis on moving forward for FTR and circles that our back up is pretty rough, nearly non-existent. Oh boy, something else to work on but not today…still working on the refined direct and indirect reins and I don’t want to confuse Renegade by adding in even more right now. We did more of the same as yesterday and in about ½ the time with Renegade even softer and more relaxed than yesterday. I’m enjoying how quickly we’re progressing and how each day takes less and less time to accomplish the same thing or even more than the day before.
MORE TO COME...I'm just trying to catch up now...whew...been a busy couple of weeks!!
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