Extroverted, Introverted, and Everything In-Between

Our natural trimmer, Rodger, came down on Saturday to do the horses' feet. It was raining and Sonny had been outside, but at least he was smart enough to stay in the shelter. He was cold and wet so I brought him in and dried him off. I had no idea what was in store for me.

Poor guy :(.

After getting him dry I took him out into the area to hang out until Rodger got there. To say the least, he was wild! Running, bucking, rearing, hopping, flipping his head, shaking his neck, and overall just full of energy. I am not sure what caused it, but it was too funny! I hadn't planned on doing anything, but he didn't want to stand still at all so I figured I would help get his feet moving. We played lots of stick to me and driving game at liberty (I didn't want to be at the other end of his rope!). It is also so interesting when my normally extreme LBI doesn't want to keep his feet still. I was being a little introvert that day, so it was hard for me to match his energy. Here is a short clip of it:

When he is extroverted is the only time I ask him to rear. When he is his usual, introverted self, my rear command is met with a lift of his nose and a grunt, without his feet ever moving haha. 

Once Rodger got there he calmed down and was good. His feet are really looking great! Which is a huge improvement from last fall when Rodger first started doing them.

Today Sonny was back to his normal self. Very introverted and not wanting to move very much. I set up some trot poles and did some different things with those. He backed right over them without trying to get out of it, so I was really happy with that. I also had him circle all the poles, then go between them, then over them, the stop in front of them, and everything I could think of. This got him interested enough to give me so good faces so I kept it short and sweet and ended on that. 

Before I took him out of the arena I wanted to work on one more thing (this is where the "in-between" part of the title comes into play). A few days ago I thought it would be interesting to see if he would go sideways over me. I have always, always wanted to do it, but never tried it. After seeing a PP do it at Equine Affaire, I knew we could do it. I played with it for a bit but did more friendly game under him than sideways. Well today I played with having him go sideways over me and I think it was a huge success. For this being only our second day, I was really happy with it! 

More to come, soon!

Let the Good Times Roll

Last night was the first time I have ever seen Sonny be LBE! Man, oh, man did I love it! He was playing, doing flying changes, and even put effort into backing up! It was so exciting for him to be playful without being dominate.

Towards the end of the session he did go back to his LBI self, which was fine with me. I was just happy enough to experience LBE with him, no matter how long it lasted. It was pretty interesting to me that even though my match report says I am LBE, I had a hard time keeping up with his energy. I really enjoyed the 'go, go, go' part, but felt much more connected to him once he went back to being LBI. Considering I am on the cusp of an LBI, I guess that is where my true LBI traits show through.

Once things calmed down I played with the spanish walk for the first time in a while. I don't ask him to do it much because he can get really frustrated with it and that defeats the purpose. Last night was great though, he even did two steps in a row for the first time! Hopefully the next time we play with it he can do the same again.

I also wanted to bring up that, after my lesson with Juli, I have been giving him much more time to think. When he thinks he does this thing where he hangs his head to the right and stays there for a really long time. Once he licked and chewed (which normally comes pretty fast) I used to just move on to the next thing. Juli had me wait there until he looked at me before I moved on. I have been keeping up with that and have seen some HUGE changes. Even though it can be like watching paint dry, I am really seeing the benefits of waiting for him to give me two eyes and two ears. He is now giving more good faces than bad, which is amazing. He is almost always walking into me with good faces and I couldn't be happier about it.

Yesterday was just amazing; I hope to see more days like that in our future!

The 'watching paint dry' thinking face.