The Friendly Game

On Friday, Hobbie and I worked on consistency again. He has gotten much better on the 20 meter circle, paying more attention to me and less to the other horses around him. We tried to go in a line to see how it went, that is much harder for him. That was all we worked on because I still don't want to push him too hard. I think lunging would improve his consistency so I think we are going to start lunging some. Oh! We did spend time with Western reining before and after our other work, and I used the proper hand position! Exciting and weird!
On Sunday, we were lucky enough to get to go back to the barn. I believe Parelli would really benefit me as a horse trainer and when I get my next horse so I am reading and watching lots of videos on it. We started with the friendly game yesterday. People have lots of opinions on the way to do these games. I chose to use a mix between most videos I watched with the sticks and whips, Pat Parelli's videos and Nancy Allen's descriptions of the friendly game.
My last horse had really gotten to a bad point with me where he decided being caught was a chasing game. No, I never actually chased him, I'd lunge him in his pastures until he decided to let me catch him, but it was a real problem in a 40 acre field, sometimes taking 3 hours to catch my horse. Patience always won out, but who has 3 hours to catch their horse? I can't let this ever happen again so this is the real reason for all of this. Hobbie ran for a minute on Sunday and you can imagine my fear when I held out cookies.
So, the friendly game that Hobbie and I spent time with was a combination of all I've learned in the last week. I started with simply touching him all over from head to tail, letting him relax and getting used to my touch. Then we picked up the whip and did the same thing that way, praising him when he was good and giving him lots of cookies, ending in a nice lunge. When he was pretty steady in his trot both ways, we went back to hands all over again, and just relaxing before being done for the day. It seemed like a success!

I have a doctor's appointment set up to talk about my health and find out if something is wrong or if I need to change something in the way I am doing things. It isn't for two weeks though. My best friend and I went on a nice hour long walk today. I carried weights today too, it totally works all the muscles I use in my arms for riding, I love it! I am not a gal with upper body strength, so every little bit helps. I've been eating well this past week, but I really need to cook at home some. I'm thinking about Lettuce Wraps, mmmm so good. Maybe I will post the recipe tomorrow when I make them....