Weekend ramblings

Well the weekends seem to go too fast! My new Knowledge pack arrived, I looked at how much I have spent in my journey and I swallowed hard. I have invested a lot in my journey and I don't regret one cent of it at all. I have watched 3 of the DVD's so far and although there is a lot I already know "cool" there is a lot that I am learning.

I played with Star on line on Sunday and found him to be very playful to say the least. We played around a tree that had fallen down. He got all fizzed up and only thought about jumping, he did one pass over the main branches of the tree that would be 5 foot and cleared it with ease!! After a while we managed to get to sniffing the log, walking over the log, squeezing between me and the log and then we moved on to another more challenging set up. I have managed to construct a log jump and another one some way past. So we played here,all the while Scout was watching and stuffing his face :-) We managed to do the double on line without too much trouble...it was the rearing at the end that was interesting! How playful is this horse and how I am glad I am not riding him yet! He looks to play every time now which is great, now all I need to work on is constructive play!

I took Scout out for a walk along the road as the arena was too wet and the paddock too slippery for him. Interesting. I encountered about 12 years of behaviour that he has honed to perfection! He got RBE then LBE then he went dominant, reared, would not disengage his hind quarters and all while doing this sort of stuff I played games to win. He took 20 minutes and then the realisation dawned on him that when he reared, carried on and tried to be the boss he had to do some very strenuous work, when he didn't do that and was a partner he got to eat grass. It took him 5 outbursts and 2 hours to get it! During this time, he reared, pawed, shook himself all over, rubbed his jowls and threw himself on the ground!!! How interesting. I hada vision of a 3 year old at the supermarket checkout chucking a tantrum cause he couldn't get what he wanted!! The rolling was amazing, he just walked along and then quick as a flash he was down. Not like when he sat down with me riding him, more like as if to say "Well I wonder if this will work!" Nope. I directed a lot of his energy into go touch this and put your foot on that and now yo yo up that bank and now turn face and wait. By the end I was exhausted, lucky to have both of my arms....and he was a mess. Bruce came to check on us twice as he could see that it was going to be a big session! God he's a treasure!

It all ended positively with us both sauntering along. Me at zone 3 and him chilled and confident without a sign of his previous behaviour. He has so much baggage, so many issues and so many savvy arrows but now I have more! When I jogged he trotted when I stopped and walked so did he. I think he made a huge leap in his trust of me on this day. I kept repeating to him out loud that I would never let him down, would never do anything to hurt him and would only try and help him see that humans are worthy leaders and that I love and respect him.

The next morning I had a horse who looked at me with softer eyes. He has since seemed different. Tonight when I go home to play with them I will start to teach him some patterns that I hope will help him become more confident. I have a street kid who is starting to see that this home is his last and it's a good one!