Confidence Breakthrough

Oh man, I think I've got it (again)! I believe that instead of Z indicate fear when she stops/hesitates and has ears back when confronted with an obstacle or open gate, she is asking me, "What should I do?". Instead of giving her leadership, I have been increasing her stress by sending her back or waiting waiting waiting.
Today, when she hesitated in front of the ground pole (4 inches up on the deck planters), I smiled, and gave her the "send" instruction. Her ears came up and she went over the pole confidently!!!! I used the same tactic throughout our session, and achieved much. We will definitely be progressing through level 2 online now!

Sideways without a fence: 12 feet, between cones, going to the left (her good eye to me). Just needed reminder with shake of rope to not step forward, and got it.
Couldn't do it to right (bad eye to me), as kept trying to circle and was confused by being stopped. That's okay, might not be able to do it this way.

Figure 8. Had planned to work on this at walk, but she was pretty extroverted and did it all in the trot. She seemed to really notice the carrot stick today when I used it to stop her from zipping by  me when she needed to change direction. This either pissed her off, or scared her, couldn't really tell. She did speed up and zoom through the change. I just kept repeating the pattern. Then remembered to give verbal direction, so used "slow" and "over" to help direct her, which I think helped, or at least the sound of my voice gave her some confidence. Played with this in both directions. Stopped when she trotted the change calmly. Yahoo!!!

Find the Carrot: placed long pieces of carrots partially under small cones on mounting block and directed her to them. She was confused - wanted to eat them, but either worried about the cones or about taking something she shouldn't. I kept encouraging her, stopped her from going away bodily or otherwise. Slowly slowly she inched her lips to the carrot, and pulled the first one out. We came back to this later, and it again took awhile for her to be confident to touch cone or take the carrot. Very interesting. Will need to repeat. 

Trailer Loading Simulation: Directed Z to go into another horse's stall. It was dark because the stall window was closed. Hesitated a bit, but then went in, checked out the hay and feed bowl, ate what was in the bowl. She was much more worried about coming out of the stall. Not sure why, but she seemed bothered by the environment - probably has never "seen" all the stuff around from that viewpoint.

What a day for me - learning wise, but then, aren't they all?