Raise Your Hand if You're A Direct Line Thinker

I had a lesson with Juli the other day and she mentioned that Sonny goes to 'autopilot' when out on a circle. Interesting... I never thought about it. We have been working on transitions on a circle a lot lately, but apparently he isn't getting the hit to ask questions.

So I set up a small jump and started playing. I know Pat always says to do other things than the normal so your horses asks more questions. Well, what do you do with a jump? Jump it! Duh! I guess that has always been my idea. Yeah, I occasionally have him sidepass in front of it, but that is about the extent of my imagination.

Juli suggestioned working on transitions with the jump. Just because it is a jump, your horse doesn't always have to jump it when he gets close. So I started doing things like trot up to it, stop and back up. Walk, then trot up to it, stop, then sideways. Walk up to it and touch it. Circle in front of it then circle behind it. Squeeze between it. Trot up to it, sidepass, jump it. Canter up to it, stop, back up.

The first thing I did was trot up to it, stop, then was going to ask for the back up. When I got to the -stop- part, Sonny looked at me like WHAAAAAT?!?! It was so funny I couldn't do anything but laugh!  After more playing he got the idea and started asking more questions!

After we had a good grasp on the jump, I figured maybe I should apply the same concept to the pedestal. At first I just asked him to walk up to it and stop. The first couple times he continued to put his front feet on it. So I backed him off and played lots of the friendly game. After a few times with that he got the idea that I didn't want him to put his feet on it, so he would stop in front of it and lift his leg OVER the pedestal and kind of hang it there. How interesting!!! He is such a character, but this showed me I do the majority of my thinking inside the box. I am not nearly the creative person that my LBI needs me to be. It was really upsetting to come to the realization that I have been a direct line thinker all along and haven't even realized it.

If people could be perfect, never ending self improvement wouldn't even exist. I just need to learn from the experience and move on. I can't dwell on things in the past, Sonny definitely isn't going to. I am going to just put these arrows in my quiver and be a better human for my horse!