2nd Sept 2010 - It's the small changes that make the big differences

The last few session I have noticed that the back-up part of our Yo-Yo has been getting a bit 'wiggly' and as I was starting to play with Bella tonight I remembered the saying 'slow and right beats fast and wrong', so I decided to abandon the canter circles exercise I was going to work on and get the back-up fixed.  

With this in mind I started to think 'what is causing it to go wiggly?' Is it confidence? I don't want to? Is she preempting the send? I was pretty sure it wasn't 'don't want to' as she had a soft look on her face and was backing from a phase one, so that voided that option.   So was she preempting? I remembered seeing Pat on one of the DVD's, I think it might have been on one of the LHB ones but can't remember, backing his horse out then turn his back to the horse for a while then turn back and when the horse asks a question he asked it in, then he repeated this exercise, sometimes sending on a circle, sometimes not.  I tried this with Bella but after a few tries there was no change. 

So this left me with confidence which lead me to thinking about thresholds.  This time as I backed her out I asked her to go S-L-O-W, almost one foot at a time, and if she started to wiggle I would ask her to stop, draw to me a step or two, stop then slowly back again.  This was when I found the 1st threshold.  At about 8ft she hesitated, just for a second, so I stopped her, drew her in then re-asked her back just 1 step and she lowered her head, snorted and yawned over and over again! Wow!  I left her there till she started to graze then asked her back to me for a rub and a release.  Then I repeated this over and over every time I saw a hesitation, her head lift a bit, an ear flick, even her weight shift wrong, and every time she made a huge sigh and yawned.  

After about 30 mins she was backing straight and rhythmically to about 15ft with no wiggling or hesitation so I decided to leave it there on a good note while she was feeling successful and brought her in for a good scratch followed by some UDT while she grazed. 

I will now make this a pattern for the next 7 sessions with the aim to get her all the way on the 45ft CONFIDENTLY then I will start it again at liberty.