Mo's Most Interesting Day....

This is day one officially of Fluidity two and it was by far Mo's most interesting day here - for me.

First thing this morning was interesting and very cool thing number one. Every morning I come in, I grab a wheel barrow, then I say good morning to Mo, get her buckets, fill them, and leave them to soak while I clean out her pen. Usually, Mo stands and stares forlornly at her buckets trying to phase them through the bars of her pen so she can reach them.

This morning Iris was kind enough to give me one of the carrots she brought for her horse Anne and so I broke that up into bits in my pocket and gave one to Mo on my approach. She must have really liked that because it intrigued her enough that alfway thorugh mucking out she gave up her eternal quest for mind bending powers to come and hang out with me while I finished. I was floored!!! She was standing right beside me, intered in what I was doing, not even in a "give me a treat" kind of way! How cool is that?? To top of the awesomeness of the morning ritual, today when I brought her bucket into the pen she BACKED out of my way, with EARS FORWARD! Usually I get her to back out of my space, but uasually she does it with a snarky look on her face. I make her wait til happy ears, but anways, today she got out of the ay, with happy ears and did it voluntairily. I didnt even ask her to. How awesome !!!

Which brings us to the afternoon. Today we talked about finesse and finding it with zero brace, so everything we did today had the zero brace underline in my head. Right from appraching Mo to haltering and every thing else. I have been trying really had to look at everything that way since I got here, but the reitteration has really helped me today.

On my approach today I was watching extra carefully for any brace - there was none, just happy "Oh boy come play with me!" which was stellar. Then we were scheduled to play with Me and My Shadow on the ground and riding today. So off we went, first to the water trough and then I got us into the playground via Mo's suggestion. We roamed the fenceline over towards the drive for a bit until she got a little to impulsive for me to be able to keep up [keep in mind this is total LBE WHOOHOO speed walk] so I disengaged her and got a squeal/grunt and a FLINGING of the hindquarters away from me..... well... now the game was ON!

In my head I was totally thinking "Oh boy this is fun, look at her ENTHUSIASM!" . So we played. Hard. For maybe only ten minutes, but it was so fun, AND ALL ZERO BRACE - which is HUGE for us because usually when she gets like hat all she wants to do is pull away and just leave to play with her own friends and thats that. But not this time. This time we got tiny soft canter circles, change of direction, sideways circles , yo-yos with trot draw with no drag on the line, mirroring each other with impulsion forwards and back and it was all happy playing with enthusiasm and exuberence. It was so neat and refreshing to know that I CAN go there now and not have to worry that my horse is going to leave me!

From there we went back to me and my shadow when I was content that Mo was going to respect her 51% and not take off with 65%. We walked the fenceline around until we crossed the creek - by her choice!- and then she got impulsive and took about 54% again so we went back to doing things. This time it wasnt as much squealy play but it was still play and she offered to go up on the high side of the two step cross country jump! That was a first. I ended p using the high side there to mount and move into the riden portion of the game.

Our walk went really well, Mo powered around pretty happily in the back corner, and over to the side where she stodd for a while watching Vanna and Magic with serious fascination which was pretty funny. From there she aimed at the pedestal - which is like the green ones they have on tour - and proceded to attempt eating the green foam that covers the top of it. My goodness that was FUNNY! It was so slow and deliberate - opening her mouth, pressing her teeth against it and trying so hard to get a bite off and then licking and chewing furiously when she couldnt. What a goof. I have to say I directed her away from that after laughing hysterically for a few mintues because inside I was secetly terrified that she would get a chunk off and it would be Dusty all over again except horse sized.

Near the pedestal was the big dressage arena thing where the Patterns were filmed I think so we went in there to have a confined but big area to practice our trot. Trotting went ok. At times I felt like I was bouncing all over because she would really open up and do her speed trotting which really isnt the best thing for riding bareback. I mirrored her as best I could and then when I finally felt good I jumpd off because I was out of ideas. WELL. As soon as my feet hit the ground and I was finished undoing my 22' from reins I had Miss Playful Goober from earlier back and so we played some more HARD. I kept thinking how much of and extrovert she was as she went around and then wasnt being food motivated at all - it was all play motivation.

Even though she was winging around though, there was no brace, it was all light and soft and FUN. I worked hard trying to keep up with ideas and things, and I think I did ok. Lots of change of direction, circles into sideways into yo-yo and things like that. Even got a few flying lead changes on the change of direction at the canter. THAT was cool. But she was right with me the whole time - my changes were litterally one step back and one step forwards. Incredible. So soft. I was just loving eevery second of it. Then when she calmed down and stopped offering a canter at every little gesture I got into really playing with circles into sideways and really refining that into a valid thing, which was really neat and really empowered Mo a lot - the whole coiling the spring and then letting it loose when she went out on the circle again - very cool. Canter departs while being rocked on her haunches are very pretty and powerful looking!

After playing with that for a while until Mo was out of exuberence for a second we walked out over to the honeyomb and I mounted again to see if we could trot slow in the honeycomb. Answer was no sorta kinda, but she was focused enough to do canter transitions, so we did that some, and played with upping the speed and still stopping off my body language. When I got bored with that I went over to visit J who was just mounting and we hung out and talked until Julia on faculty came by and somehow we attached ourselves to her horse and three of us ended up shadowing her around the yard and out into the hill playground where finally Mo decided to head back to her pen.

So that was our awesome day. Some very cool things for Mo, and some very interesting lessons in lightness for me!!
WHOO!!

:-)
S