Unconditional Love

By definition, Unconditional Love is a term that means to love someone regardless of the loved one's qualities or actions. The term never made sense to me until I got Sonny.

Thursday night we hit a rough patch. Sonny has issues with bits that date back to his old owners (and who knows how far back it started before that), so I have never ridden him with one. Now that we are moving towards finesse, I want to start getting him to like the bit. We were making progress, but I pushed him past his threshold Thursday and felt so bad about it. He was tense and unhappy and I thought for sure that was going to negatively affect our relationship.

But last night was so perfect and I couldn't have been any happier. The weather was nasty and I had homework to do so I didn't plan on spending much time at the barn, but wanted to have a good night to make up for my mistakes Thursday night.

Right off the bat he blew me away. As you know we have been playing with laying down, but he has been moving around a lot before he will lay. Usually I walk him to the end of the arena and ask, then he walks around a couple of circles then finally lays down. Last night I thought I would try it as soon as we got into the arena. Right in front of the gate I asked him to lay down, then kept a light rhythmic motion on the line (I just had my featherline attached). Since he is such a superstar of course he laid down right beside me!! I was ecstatic. He is so stinkin' smart I can't even keep up!

On top of that, he was totally LBE last night and I loved it. He was so playful and wanted to go, go, go. I brought out the big green ball and he was cantering it around the arena! He has mastered moving it on the go, but has never cantered with it before! Then the ball got stuck and he fell up on top of it and his front legs were smashed into it and I thought for sure he was going to break a leg. Then he popped up and continued chasing it haha! Along with that, he was bucking, rearing, jumping straight up in the air and being all sorts of energetic (definitely not LBI! ;)). Another boarder was in the arena working her show horse...I am sure she and her dad think I own some crazy beast now!

I wanted to get on and just walk around to, again, make up for the bad ride on Thursday. I didn't have anything but a featherline, so I just tied my savvy string around his neck. I did a few turns and he was amazing. Without even my carrot stick, he was doing turns on the forehand...just based on my weight and leg position! His turns were so good forehand and hindend, for the heck of it I asked for a step sideways without reins, carrotstick or a wall. Of course he went perfectly sideways :). Considering I have only played with sideways without reins a handful of times, I was extremely pleased!

I got off after that since I wanted to end on a good note. I had him stand there while I fetched my featherline. As I was walking back up to him, I stopped at his butt. Sonny knows that if I raise my hand, he moves his butt towards me (like sideways towards me), so just playing around, I stopped behind him and raised my hand. It was so funny because I could tell he was watching me get the rope because as soon as I raised my hand, his head shot up and his ears were moving...trying to figure out what I wanted. He thought about it for a while, but I remained still letting him figure it out. After a minute or so he took a step backwards! How awesome!

So my lesson of the day is: It doesn't matter what we accomplish. If he never wants to wear a bit, fine with me. That is so far from importance that there was no need at all for me to be upset about it or for me to push him in any kind of way. All that matters is the relationship; as long as we always have that, the love will be unconditional.