Patterns...

So we've been playing with the figure 8 and weave patterns but with one little glitch. Duck hates it! She pins her ears, swishes her tail and has a majorly bad attitude. I wrote to Carol to ask what to do and basically she wrote back and told me this is where you experiment. Obstacles in the weave or more snappy departures. I went for the obstacles since she seems to get less confident when I do the snappy departures. She still had a bad attitude but after she was done she sighed, blew a lot and licked an chewed. We'll see how it is next time. 

We also did a little with the trailer again. I don't have time to do a trailer loading marathon so we have been doing a little here and there. Yesterday we went to the 2 horse trailer and the divider was pushed off to one side. I had her touch the trailer and walk across the ramp a couple times. After that I asked her to load once to see what she would do. She went 3/4 the way in and stood there a good minute before I asked her out. I also tried rattling stuff around to see if it still bothers her. So far it is getting better. We ended our trailering time with that.

I rode just for a little while bareback follow the rail again. Last time she pretty much had the hang of the walk, so I decided to trot. We got maybe 5 steps in each direction before breaking gait. But yesterday when I asked her to trot first to the left she trotted off and we pretty much did a whole lap with only 1 correction to stay on the rail and not breaking gait! So we stopped in the middle for a bit then did the other side. She was a bit more rushy the other way but the last 1/4 she relaxed so I brought her into the center and quit.

We also did a little bit of liberty in the big practice arena. This was right after the weave pattern which goes to show what she thinks of it when I let her go she went straight to the gate and I didn't think I'd be able to draw her away. Well I tried and thankfully I was wrong it took a minute but she did stick to me and we trotted, walked, backed up, sent her over a small crossrail (the first time she didn't go) etc. I'm just happy that she generally stays with me now at liberty! It's getting better!