Over the Moon

I had such a wonderful weekend with Sonny. Although nothing spectacular happened, he had me over the moon.

Friday we had a short, sweet, and successful liberty session. My lesson of the day: Don't micromanage! Man, oh, man! I get so LBE and caught up in perfection that I don't always realize how much I can micromanage Sonny. Only recently have we been playing with figure 8's at liberty, with very little success. Things were going great Friday so I rolled out some barrels and started the pattern. Things weren't going so smoothly so I stopped and thought about what was broken. As always, it was me. I was so focused on getting these tight, perfect little turns around the barrels that I was oblivious to all the great things Sonny was offering me. I tried again with a better attitude and it went so well! He went pretty far out and around the barrels, but I was barely doing anything and he was putting so much effort into the pattern! He kept moving instead of stopping at the barrel, and did really well going back in-between then and turning back towards me. The best part: we ended with him coming back towards me with a very happy face :).

We also had some small achievements Saturday. My favorite came when I was talking to some friends during a circling game. My friends were standing directly in front of me and I had some barrels lined up directly behind me. I had sent him out on a circle and was passing the rope behind my back when my friends told me he had jumped them. For a minute I didn't quite understand what had happened. "You're trying to tell me my LBI jumped barrels behind my back without me asking and with plenty of room to go around them on either side? No way!" I was flabbergasted. Sonny is pretty darn good about keeping up with his responsibilities, but they usually don't hold up with things that require too much energy. For him to maintain gait, maintain direction and look where he was going behind my back, well I couldn't be happier!

Today was pretty great, too! We focused on touch it: touch it from a long distance, touch it with on one foot, touch it with your tail, etc. I also really gave him time to think today. I didn't do anything until he gave me two eyes and two ears. It was a long, boring process and my inner LBE was digging to get out, but I think it will really pay off. Along with that, he had some excellent jumps! In attempt to move more towards level 4, I put standards with a pole higher than barrels laying down. The pole was only a couple inches higher then the barrel, but it was a good start. He jumped it three times and was pretty good about it. The last jump he actually even started cantering before it when I only had him at a trot. I believe that would be effort :).