Welllllllll..... Let us start with this morning...
Before Classes we had an AMAZING session. It was truely amazing. It was a glance into what Level 4 will be like. Truely awesome. We played at liberty. We jumped the barrels, played stick to me, squeezed over the cavaleties and it was amazing because he didn't think about leaving at all! Ok, I admit, he left once, but came right back. We stood on the pedestal, I scratched his itchy spots and we sidewaysed without a fence over barrels. It was so awesome. Totally amazing. I can't say enough positive words about it. I wish my sister had gotten pictures. THEN, oh yes, it gets better...
I hopped on from the pedestal, dropped my carrot sitck, oops, and we just walked around bareback and bridleless. AMAZING! A week ago he would have freaked. But I hadn't played with him for three days and he was awesome! We walked over the cavaleties and followed Scout around. I was so happy! My jeans were covered in his hair because he is shedding like crazy. Then I had to go in and get ready.
After we got home, it was so nice out, 30 degrees, so we went out and rode. Eddie did awesome again. We only walked, oh well, but we did a lot of patterns and I can tell he really enjoyed it. I'm thinking about doing my freestyle in the round pen, since he doesn't have any 'issue spots' in there. I'm still trying to figure out his issue with the east end.
So I got off, because he was doing so well. It's funny, I could hear Linda in my head saying, "Quit when it feels good. Even though it's hard." So reluctantly I got off. Then we played for a long time with the east end, so I could see what was going on in his mind. "Hmmm... How interesting! He's really unconfident." We did all the games at that end, but still no improvement. We're going to keep working on that! So we went out of the outdoor and on the other side of the rail on the east end. He was very fractious/panicky and hyper-alert. RBE much? No wait... LBE on adrenaline! He's always on adrenaline this time of year, because it's SPRING! That means he has lots of SPRING! =-D Which he had a lot of. I switched to a 22 foot line and our halter, instead of the hackamore, and we played with that. He exploded! YAHOO! We jumped, and reared, and bucked, and finally I let go and he went flying back to the stalls and trotted around like a crazy man. I was laughing. It reminded me of Linda and Allure during the Purtiy of Gait segment this past November. 8-O So, we sorted everything out, and approached and retreated away from the 'end of death'.
Wish us luck! I hope he comes out of this phase soon! And please pray I have the savvy to deal with it!
Lea & Eddie
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