•yield the hindquarters off of driving pressure
•yield the hindquarters and spiral out (a leading exercise)
•yield the forequarters off of driving pressure
•desensitizing to the lead rope
•turn and draw
We introduced driving pressure to get Banjo to move away. At the beginning we used steady pressure where I would touch, press, push, then dig (increasing pressure in increments when she would ignore it) to get her to move away. Now that she is not fearful, we can introduce driving pressure. A little one would probably be quite fearful of driving pressure in the beginning so we use steady pressure. As they get older, they are more likely to lean into steady pressure, but they can't lean into driving pressure very easily. The point is to make them uncomfortable for doing the wrong thing (i.e. not moving) and then to immediately release the pressure when you get the desired response. So when I taught her to yield her hindquarters off of driving pressure, I start out by twirling the end of the lead rope at her hindquarters. I increase the pressure if she doesn't respond by lightly letting the end of the rope tap her. If she still doesn't respond then I let it tap her harder and so forth. At the point it makes her uncomfortable she will move away. I start with light pressure every time so that eventually she will learn to respond to a very slight cue. As she learns the exercises I can begin to refine them by asking her with light pressure and then tell her with firmer pressure-as in please? No? Well move NOW. As they are just learning it's is important to let them find the answer by gradually increasing the pressure as I described above. She got the hang of yhq pretty quickly and it is taking more time to get her to yield her forequarters correctly. I need to look and see if David has filmed that one so hopefully I can see something that I can fix so that my cues are more clear.
Yielding the hindquarters and then spiraling out is a leading exercise designed to get the horse to move their feet in a yield and then when they have yielded 360 degrees then you lead them out in a circle. She did okay at this and we have made progress each day (Friday, Saturday, and Sunday). A lot of times they will follow you easily but when you pull on the lead rope and they feel pressure behind their ears they will resist. As they are walking on the circle behind you, you pick up the slack and pull and see if they will come off of it without resisting. I definitely want to go back and review the DVD again to see how Clinton progresses from this exercise to pulling on the lead rope from a standstill. His filly has problems with this progression and I want to refresh my memory so that we can make some more progress on this.
I also introduced desensitizing her with the lead rope...throwing the end of it all over her back and legs wanting her to stand and relax...accepting it without moving. I have tried this three times now on both sides of her body and really saw progress the third time. She naturally wants to move away from it sometimes. She is definitely not too overreactive though so that is helpful!
The final exercise we introduced is turn and draw. Essentially I stand in front of her, toss the lead rope over her neck, and then pull the end around her butt. With let's say my left hand on the lead rope up by the halter, my right hand is on the lead rope that is around her butt. Then I step back, release my left hand, and begin to lightly pull with my right hand. As she feels the pressure on the halter, she will turn her head away and then spin away from me and then complete the circle, facing me. I back up as she is turning and then ask her to come up to me as she completes the turn. She got the hang of this really fast yesterday. Exciting!!!
So I plan to review these things and improve her leading today and tomorrow and see how all that is going before I teach her anything new.
Here are some pics from the weekend:
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