Different day

I was reading a blog this morning of a lady called Cathy who is currently at the ISC Florida doing a course. It was great - I couldn't stop reading it - she must make so many notes!! I love people that make good notes - I have only ever done it once in my life because the speaker was so interesting and didn't treat us like twits! Anyway her blog is http://www.freewebs.com/isccj/blog.htm in case you are interested.

So bearing alot of that in mind -mainly using life up and life down as phase 1 - I tried it out for yo yo - wow! Garbo picked up on my having my life up and mother in law face and took a step back, the blog also said to wait after one step and then do another - this really made Garbo lick and chew. I think this will help alot with his eagerness to be drawn back.

Before that we did friendly game with the plastic rustly bag and got up his neck (top and bottom) and between ears - not face yet. Took his mind off the truck backing up next to us anyway.

The other thing in the notes that struck a chord with me was at liberty leaving a door open during send.... often in circle at liberty (long range) Garbo will swap directions and look out of the arena. So I stepped back as I sent and also moved towards zone 5 - that kinda helped.

We then tried short range circle game at liberty and that actually worked really well.

So today - Garbo walk trotted and cantered round me very very closely at liberty - like he did not feel confident to move away, - sometimes when I asked for canter he would stick his ears back..... but - he didn't take off and leave!

We didn't stay on it too long. Other times he would go to the fence and do sideways instead of long range circle (very cute).

Did a bit of driving - man he hates driving FQ. Must do some work on that.

Then - after about an hour - I saddled him up - he must have thought - oh no - it was so hot and muggy but it was overcast so no hot sun beaming down - and the farm was unusually quiet so I just had to ride.

We started in the arena briefly and then went all over the farm and into all the open paddocks - trotted and cantered a bit - walked a big long walk to cool down, and did sideways - wow that's getting good.

Tomorrow I am going to trot everywhere for 7 minutes like in the book of Stephanie's.