GOAL: Lunge session in the round yard, keep it short, keep control, don't get hurt. Got to get some Spring weight off him and make sure he doesn't founder like Boo has begun to (whoops)
ACTUALITY: Started by walking Tallic up the arena paddock. Thought this would be a good place to start, as his attention was back on Boo who was in the dam paddock. The 3 dogs next door were going spare, barking and running up and down, Boo called out a few times, so, quite a few distractions.
- tried to keep his pace with mine by checking him back, but he tended to just pull against me. Asked him to bend his nose around to a halt, but noticed that he would only stop when facing Boo's paddock. Kept going until we got to the arena.
- on the arena, he was still un-focussed and tending to pull and barge thru the checks on the lead and even responded with a small rear when firmly checked. Decided that was a good time to have him back up a few paces. This resulted in him actually focussing on me - yay.
- kept walking about on the arena asking for him not to pull etc. Got some nice changes of direction (away) by yielding his face with the rope in my hand as well as slight finger pressure into the neck.
- asked him to keep pace with me, just by slowing down and speeding up my walk - yay, it worked, he must be paying attention now!
- asked him to halt by putting less and less pressure on the rein, to the point of just lifting it up and hoping he'd noticed (like with the slowing down and speeding up) -also worked
- thought I'd best keep it short, seeing as he was doing such a lovely job, and started to walk back down the paddock (the RY work could wait until another day!) Just before finishing the session, I decided to reward his soft responses with a little piece of carrot instead of just the rub he'd been getting. Not sure if I will continue with this sort of reward training, but I was careful to make sure it was not every time we did a transition. (Louise and I talked about possible pitfalls of this type of training in our 'postmortem', and I agree it could be a dodgey method)
- walked back down the paddock towards Boo, and although he lost his concentration a few times, it was brought back much more softly than the trip up to the arena
- went into the paddock with Boo to do a little bit more leading training (with a distraction) and was very pleased with him
End of session 1!
I must add that I was very pleased with how well Lutallic picked up all 4 feet (I must remember not to stand so close in with the back feet and give him some room!), and I even put some hoof goo on them before putting his booties on.
What a champ. Let's see what tomorrow brings hey
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