Bella...

I had a fun play with Bella today!  Lara has left Bella here for the school holidays, and is coming over most days to play with her.  They have just passed their online level 3, and she is starting to work on liberty.

Liberty is very challenging for Bella, well, no that's not true, it is easy for Bella, it is very challenging for Lara with Bella!!!  When Lara first got Bella, she could be very dominant, and as soon as she had had enough, she would leave.  Not just wander off, or tune out, she would leave with the force of a freight train!!  Lara become the master of the power position.

It is so lovely to see how their relationship has developed.  Bella is so much more positive now, and has a much nicer expression on her face.  She is also soooo soft in Lara's hands.  It is beautiful to see! 

But it is also great to stretch Lara!  So today when she was playing, I suggested she focus on Bella asking questions.  Bella is doing everything Lara asks, and nice and softly, but I could see she was just going through the process a little, and could engage more.  So Lara got a pocket full of sunflower seeds and started really rewarding when Bella asked a question.  They started to break things riiiiiigggghhhhtttt down.  Like send her out on a figure 8, if she got to the cone and stopped, Lara didn't ask her on, even softly, she waited, and waited, and even waited some more, until Bella would finally look at her and ask her what was going on.  To start with Lara would bring her in and give her a few seeds and tell her how clever she was.  Of course, this blew Bella's mind!  She gradually asked more questions, and they came a lot quicker, and Lara was able to ask more and more.

Then came my opportunity to play with her!!  Bella very rarely storms off like a steam train now, but I notice that she still 'leaves' or checks out.  Sometimes it is really subtle, she will just sidle sideways a little and put herself out of position.  Lara then has to go after her to put her back, so Bella has quietly changed her focus.  Other times you see her whole body language change, like today, I was asking her to do a weave pattern.  She would stay connected, and then her whole posture would change, she would straighten up, and look to leave.  If you corrected her, she would keep doing the weave, but I felt she is at a level where she needs to be held accountable more, and not micromanaged so much.  This horse knows the weave pattern inside out, but still makes Lara work hard, even if ever so softly, and when she was doing this to me I was trying to think how to make her decide it was a better option to put effort in to what I wanted...

Sooooo, I would ask Bella to do a nice gentle, slow weave, and when she zoned out and thought about leaving I went 'here, let me help you!!' and away she went!  We were on a 45' rope, and that girl can really get some pace up, so I let her run up hill and down dale, kept putting jumps in front of her, and ditches, and piles of dirt.  As soon as she looked like she was looking to me, we went back over to the logs and I invited her to walk calmly around the pattern again.  If she started to leave again, away she would go!!  I can't remember how many times it took, or how long, but she made the connection!  She realised she could take responsibilty, stay on the pattern, and stop trying to intimidate me, and life would be easy for her!!  Or, she could try and take over, and find out that her idea might not be all she thought it was cracked up to be!  I didn't force her to canter, she would take off at a canter, I just kept wandering around and putting as many obtacles as I could in front of her.

It was one of those moments that I didn't have a plan, I just did what came to me, stuck at it, and came through the other side.  Dave Ellis told us us that when the horse comes up with it's own idea, don't try and make them feel wrong, he used to say "go ahead, try it, let me know how it works out for you!"  This is what I was doing with Bella, letting her have her idea, then she had to decide if it was a good one or not!

Thanks Lara, I love playing with Bella!