Liberty is FUN AGAIN!

After my little [reads: ginormous life-altering]  breakthrough courtsey of my momsy I have been finally having fun with Liberty. And mostly with Mo again. And horses in general. Part of that being now I actually have TIME, since I let go of the one extra job that was causing me so much un-needed stress. So I have been playing with Mo in a whole different mind set and its been AMAZING!

My attitude is so much happier and joyful and light that hers is too. My LBE is BACK and better than EVER!!!! The funniest things have been happening in the past few sessions - one of them being that EVERYTHING ends up in Mo's mouth. Thats HUGE for her to show off her confidence again. She's all "Oh, halter? Is that like a bridle?"[into mouth it goes] "Or reins? Yum!" "ROPE! On the ground and otherwise unattended! MMMM" And then she looks at me all innocent and slowly spits out whatever is in her mouth. [At least she isnt like Zephyr, who has been munching on rocks she thinks might be dropped cookies.... yea. Shes a bright crayon]

So today I went out to say hi to Mo and she was all excited and power walked over to me from the other side of the pond and stuffed her face into her halter [after trying to eat it....]We wandered over to the barn playing with some stick to me transitions on the way to the land of bug sprays. Mo was right with me and STRAIGHT! I was playing with a technique Pat showed in a Mastery Lesson with Merlin the other day and it really helped her think in straight lines, very cool!

After getting sufficiently moistened with fly spray we went out on one featherline and played with stick to me some more, on a bigger circle and at a trot and canter and changes of direction and then headed into the roundpen to have some FUN at liberty. Its my new thing. Liberty is FUN. Dont DRILL. I dont feel like I was, but my attitude was. "Its got to be good, we HAVE to audition!" Its always better when its fun though! And Mo always plays harder!

One thing I have really noticed is that I can play harder... ask more with more intention when she is confident than before when there was so much worry. Which makes sense, but I tagged her once, playfully, and she just went "Oh DANG! You got me!" and caught up to me whereas before she would have been really worried and left.... I love it! There was lots of playful/dominant head shaking, which while something I will keep an eye on, made me really happy to see her feeling that way!

We started out mirroring what we did online, some stick to me circles, walk and trot, changes of direction and Mo was just BEAUTIFUL! All long and stretchy and flowy and close to me! She never even offered to leave to the rail. It was about a 15 foot circle, and it was wonderful. As soon as I thought canter it was there, up and down transitions, changes of directions [slowly though] but all soooo connected! Even flowing in and out of a figure eight! She even offered me some cantering through the figure eight!

I love my pony!!

And then we rode :D And it was super! She was still flowy and stretchy and wonderful at the trot. We started with a follow the rail around the round corral and transitions and then moved to playing with some canter transitions. She was so light off my leg that at first when I brought my leg back to ask for the canter she just abruptly turned that direction. It was a great lesson on cantering in my body first! My legs have a tendency to get ahead of me :) We figured it out though. It was really good for Mo I think, because I had bridled her, but just had the reins looped around her neck without being attaached to the bit. So she got to be more confident with the bit andnot have me fuss with it.

We played on a sort of skewed question box pattern, just because I had to many things in the arena :) She tried really hard, and we got lots of tries on the front end then drop to a trot stride and pick it up - Which I have to say is a HUGE improvement from her just ignoring that her back end was on the wrong lead, so ROCK ON MO! :D

So that was our ride. I went out planning to warm up freestyle and play with the Game of Contact, but I got to distracted by super fun freestyle instead :D I love my Mo!

:D

S