Thresholds and riding

Today we spent about an hour on the ground working on thresholds. I was not very considerate of my horse the second day she was at the barn in May. She seemed fine. I took her for a "trail ride" around the property. There is a bit of a trail that goes off the hayfield and into the trees. Duck did very well while we were on this ride, but when I tried to take her over there again on the ground it was more than apparent that she wasn't confident about it. So well over a month ago we  played on the ground in the hayfield towards the trail. The opening to the trail is between a fence and a tree and it goes from the open hayfield into the mass amounts of forest. LOL So it is an obvious threshold. Last time we were still a good 100ft from the entrance to the trail when I quit.

We played approach and retreat in the hayfield and finally made it to where she was comfortable grazing right outside the opening. I then sent her in squeeze style and she promptly came right back out! We retreated further into the hayfield (towards her pasture and stall) and grazed. We repeated several times until she could stand in the "scary place". Then she grazed right outside the opening for quite awhile. I sent her in again and she took me for a walk into the woods in zone 5! We didn't go very far but then I went to zone 2 again and stood with her. We got comfortable standing and then retreated out.

Then we headed to the practice arena to ride. She seemed in tune with me so I just did one exercise on the ground sending her one way and then another and then got on. Funny thing she had more trouble today getting TO the arena (on the ground) so we had to stop a lot and retreat. One goal I have is to get her confident enough to ride from the barn to the arena and back by myself.

I got on and my goal for the day was to get her softer to my body and more responsive to direction. We have had issues with direction. She has her idea and then wants to pull on me. I got her going good on a figure 8 between 2 barrels walking and then trotted. It fell apart again. So we went back to a million transitions so I could try and get her trot softer. It seems when she started to trot today she was getting rushy. Nothing too much but not relaxed. It could of had to do with the fact that there was one more rider in the arena this time. I introduced myself and we started talking riding around together. Duck has a huge personal bubble and her horse was "intruding" into Duck's space, in Duck's mind anyway! Gently with the carrot stick I reminded her no "crabby" ears. After about 5 laps around she was happy next to the new horse. I was also pleased to find out that Liz, the rider I was talking with is also familiar with and has studied the program some! Cool! Of course I went off on a tangent about how much I enjoy it etc!

I also tried backing from zone 5 on the ground and getting Duck to back up with pressure on her tail. It was another brief attempt but I did get a couple steps!

All in all I am pleased with our session today even though she felt rushed trotting. I don't know if it is just my riding skills (or lack thereof) or if it is just her still being green and unconfident about the arena. 

Tomorrow I would like to continue with getting more direction at the trot. Perhaps tit for tat at the trot? We have done it at the walk several times and it went quite well. 

I would also like to learn to do driving game from zone 5 and need to refresh and watch the video again to see how to progress to that. I am sure it is a ways off but I want to put the foundation into place.