June 12, 2010 On line

On line
Touch the ball (goal is to push ball with chest)

• I put ball on chair. She touched it without hesitation, and moved her hindquarters around to touch it from side as well. Came back to it a number of times.
• When she was off line at end of session I brought ball to her and she touched it, and let me touch it on her left side.
• Outside of arena, on way to stall I placed ball in her way. She touched it. I moved it under her head, and after some waiting and encouragement she moved her head down and touched it (first the nose, then the neck...).

Touch It (goal is to direct her to touch objects from a distance)

• Directed to touch cones from a couple feet away. Needed encouragement - was at start of session, so quite dozey and perhaps not motivated. Once she understood she was able to do it a few times quite well.
  
  

Moving circles at walk and trot

• fairly good both directions. Needed to keep her attention at walk, as she tended to halt when I wasn't managing her. At trot she started to pay attention to where she was going.
  
  

Weave through cones at walk

• good. When on her right side she had tendency to look toward left so it was hard to keep her attention to turn her back to me during the weave. This might be a visual issue - wanting to look to the right because she's not seeing well?
  
  

Canter both directions 22 foot line, calm and relaxed

• to left she was more settled than last time, and clearly looking where she was going. To right, easier to calm down, I get talking to her, and she moved her head noticeably as if to find me in her sightline. In this direction she was also more prone to taking her head down to see what was on the ground, again probably the visual issue. A very good job, considering how things have been
  
  

change directions at trot

• It is difficult to disengage her hindquarters and thus make the "draw". She gets confused, and comes down to a walk, and it is more difficult to get her to go out on the circle in the new direction, as she seems to just want to come to me. Practiced a lot of changes at the walk on circle and coming toward me with exaggerating the disengagement to help her learn. I needed to pull her head toward me quite a bit. Don't know if this is appropriate.

Z had just come in from a morning out in the sun and on grass. She was sleepy, so I had to pick up my energy to get her connected with me, which worked. But I needed to provide lots of relaxation time between patterns to maintain her confidence/interest. But it worked out very well, and was fun. I'm asking her to be more particular with some things now, and she is handling it well as long as she gets to wait, think, and be positively reinforced.