Sooooo today was day one in my new attempt to improve my Liberty Savvy with Mo. Oh Boy. She is home, round pen is up and we are ready to go! Except my LBE has taken a vaccation and left me with a LBI/RBI because of who knows what, new place, new things all that fun stuff. Thats totally ok, I understand and I made the extra efort to go slow - my recent Indy adventures are teaching me something!
Mo met me at the gate like she actually wanted to play with me! That was a big plus! I brought out lots of treats to give to her to help my draw later, so I gave her some right off for meeting me so nicely. Haltering went easy peasy just like usual, and then I played some friendly with the stick - which proved interesting because she kept trying to folow me when I went to zone 4/5. I played with that until she was ok with me moving around. I think it was more of a "Hey where are you going?" thing than a "Oh no! Not there!" thing.
We moseyed our way over to the pedestal, played on and off that, sideways forwards and backwards. Then into the round pen for some truth seeking.
The truth is a little ... interesting. Mo likes to be with me a lot doing close up things, but out on the rail in the 60' corral she gets lost feeling and then stands by the gate. If I draw her in she comes in looking happy. I dont think I am provocative enough without the confidence of a line on her yet. I will have to work on that. I had the four jumps set up and we played squeeze games over them with me running with her and stopping and backing up to them, that was good, squeeze game send style was good, but iffy. Circle was just sad - my send was totally ineffective. She kept getting confused about direction and heading to the gate - thats not encouraging!
On a really nice up note though, we got a few close range sideways circles really soft and nice. Our yo-yo was really supple to, which was a total surprise! So my far away-cant-hold-your-hand stuff isishy, but close up seems to work well - sideways towards went of without a hitch.
I felt bad for not being creative enough for Mo, so I decided to practice my bareback mounting. There is a little hill in the round pen, so I lined her up to it and to my infinate surprise, on my FIRST try, I swung neatly up onto Mo's back. WHOO! Now that was cool!
I tied my savvy string around her neck and had my carrot stick with me. We went around the round pen a bit but Mo kept avoiding the jumps - probably because she felt my hesitation - so we went over to the gate to leave. I love to jump, but I am not yet 100% confident in Mo's jumping ability enough to try it bareback I guess - although I did later and it was fine - go figure.
We dealt with the gate super easy, sidepassing it open and whatnot, Mo was a star. We walked around passenger style, trotted some figure eights around some trees and then my mom actually came out so I bribed her to take pictures for me. I have none of me and Mo save on show days, so it would be nice to have some just for fun stuff!
So we got some pictures quick, they arnet the greatest because it is overcast, but they are there and I am glad to have them. Mo was a doll and kept making funny faces, but we had a blast.
:-)
S
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