Twenty Five Minutes

..was all it took last night. I was late getting to the barn last night because of stops we had to make on the way home from work, but it worked with my plan to stick to ground work only last night. The last few rides our riding connection has been frazzled so I decided to lay off for at least one session, and having less time to play was really helpful in enforcing said choice.

For starters when I went to catch Mo she looked up and started walking to me, and I was just so happy and excited to be there I started running around. Mo got super curious and follwed me, but at a walk and then came up and demanded her hugs... before going "Nanner nanner! YOURE IT!" And taking off for the barn. The priceless part of this whole escapade was that on her first canter stride takeoff, she SLIPPED!! She slipped, nearly fell flat on her face, looked at me with a "You didnt see anything...." and then ran off in an attempt to save face... OMG I laughed so hard.

I havent seen her do anything quite so klutzy [and funny, with dramatic timing] since she had that tantrum in the circling game back in Russell and fell flat on her face, lay there resigned to her ignomity for about thirty seconds and then got back up like nothing happened. My horse is my mirror for sure.... you want to make a point and run or storm off? To be sure, you will be landing on your face!

When I got back to the gate Mo was all proud of herself and haltered no problem. What a goof. Trixie was in our way behind Mo, between the gate and her body, so Mo got good friendly practice while I threw the rope over her back and hit Trixie with it intentionally. When she moved [total LB "Oh.. I guess I should get out of the way of the ropse swinging?"] we went through the gate and right out to the ring, with only a minor pitstop to switch for a 22' find our hula hoop and grab the carrot stick. I also brought out my camera to video to see if I can see whats going on in Miss Mo's head that I miss. Problem is its just my normal digital camera, so focus area is itty bitty. Oh well, better than nothing!

All set up, we played friendly with our snazzy hula hoop, making all the beans go around and make noise while I rubbed Mo with it, putting it over her head, swinging it on my arm, all that fun stuff. Mo was completely unfazed - we have done it all before. Then I threw the hula hoop out behind us and got her to yo-yo her behind into it. She was really slow about it. When she got there we did some porcupine of the front end with the hind legs staying in the loop, and then I brought the hoop up over her hind end and porcupined her sideways towards and hind quarters around with the hula hoop. That was fun, and very neato.

Then, in the Great Mo Squeeze, I brought the hula hoop to her withers, lowered her head [which was sticky, so have to work on that] and brought the hula hoop down over her head, essentially squeezing my entire half draft horse through one normal sized hula hoop. Pretty cool I think!

After playing with moving the hind end while the forequarters stayed still I tried to get the hoop back up over her head but I couldnt figure it out so I led by the front legs instead. With the hula hoop I mean. Cool. When I dropped the hoop again I tried to get all four feet inside it, but got stuck at on front and one hind, so I thought that was a good success anyways. It was both left feet. We did some lead backwards by the hocks with our fun toy AND that translated into lead back by the tail!! How cool! Mo was a total star with porcupine!

After that Mo and I played with some circling changes of direction, which she was super enthusiastic about, even tried to drive ME once - only once though because I drove her hard on that one. We went over to our barrels and did some trot and canter figure eights until Mo got it - that was neat. You could see the lightbulb moment when she went "OH! We arent just flying around, theres a PATTERN here!" It was cool - although watching the video I feel like I didnt draw back enough. So I will experiment more with that.

After figure eights, we did a few more circles and changes - I think we even got a flying change of direction on one and then as our grand finale, I HELD MO'S TONGUE WITHOUT PROTEST!!!! You cant see it to super well on the video, which is unfortunate, because I am SO proud of it, but I DID IT! And Mo just sort of stood there wondering why one earth I wanted her tongue.

Mo got to graze in the backyard after while I reviewed our video. I will post it here once I get it ready. Im pretty proud of it, even though most of it is pretty slow stuff.

Twenty five minutes was all it took.

:-)
S