I took the camera out to the barn, hoping to get some good shots before it turned too dark. I took a few shots of flora on the way out there, which included laying belly down on the ground in order to get the right shot. I jokingly tell people that the only time I will ever be shooting an animal is when I have a camera in my hands. I'm hoping to learn more over the next year to where my pictures look more professional. After I completely doused my jacket in mud-perfume, I stepped through the gate and walked towards the picnic tables with our new halter and 12' line (The halter is blue, and although I was afraid of that color, I quite like it. It is going to be Finale's colorful halter, and then the 12' line is for me since mine was an off-brand and proved to have more tension and pop than it did release and give.) I grabbed my purple halter, not specifically thinking of getting Cherish, but instead just using my purple trademark. I walked out across the gravel and up the little hill, happily looking around me at the stormy sky. Once inside the gate, I waited for the first horse to come up to me and put their face in the halter- and surprisingly enough (but not so surprisingly after playing with her this morning) Hope was first. As I was playing with her, she started getting really in tune to me and asking me questions. I was being very particular about things, and I realized that she had some holes in her Yo-Yo game when I asked her to stop halfway over a small ditch.  It was especially bad when you weren't in her Zone 1 because she kept wanting to turn to place you in Zone 1. I got her to the point of where she was backing up starting with me in Zone 3 from a Phase 2, and she wasn’t turning to Phase me and going crooked! I thought this was pretty cool, because my mom has had problems backing her straight for a while now. Then her second yo, the come forward, was crooked as well... and we played with that until it was straight too. After doing this, I also got her to back by progressively pulling on her tail (with a little help from the Yo-Yo game). 


The next thing I noticed was that when she stepped on the rope, she didn't know how to get out of it. I started making them puzzles instead of problems, and then she realized that all she had to do was think and go Left Brain, rather than panic and go Right Brain. She licked her lips a lot tonight. 


When we walked up to the fence (as she was following me now) she started to do sideways like “Okay, yeah yeah, I’ve done this before.” Instead, I asked her to back up when I was in Zone 4 and her expression said “Whoa! I didn’t know you could do THAT when you came to the fence!" I stepped back and faced her, and waved my hand forward. She looked at me and proceeded to walk through the squeeze that I had set up for her. When I turned only my head to the right, she turned around and looked at me. She licked and chewed, licked and chewed. I started getting closer and closer, and she didn't panic as I have seen her do before! I even got her to stop in the middle of the squeeze, trot through the squeeze, walk through the squeeze s.....l.........o.......w..........l.......................y and quickly, etc. 


Throughout the whole play time, she kept looking at me like, “That isn’t what I expected.”  I also took her over to the log and she tried to just walk over it as if it was "been there, done that, bought the t-shirt". Instead, I started asking her to try more. Can you... step over it with one leg, then keep that leg on that side and then sideways off of the log? Can you try... Two hooves over the log, one fore and one hind, both from the same size and then back off? How about... Two hooves, both front, over the log, and then back just enough to have one hoof on top of the log? This is when it got really cool. She started asking questions when she approached the log like “Okay… Do you want me to do… This?!” She started doing all kinds of cool stuff with it and getting really creative like sidepass off of the log, going over it and backing up to it, then turning herself so that she was parallel to it and sideways toward it and put one hoof over it while parallel. The best part was it was ALL her idea!! All I had to do was encourage her and continue to reward her as she did all of this. 


When I took her out of the pasture, she started dive bombing for grass as I always see her doing with my mom. I realized that it was a very dominant behavior, so I started using the magical phases! I would warn her by starting out 45 degrees away from her hindquarters VERY softly. Then, I would get closer with phase two and a little bit harder as well. With three, I would be just behind her hindquarters and a little bit harder. For phase four, it was a matter of "tag the spot". If she moved, I would just hit the ground, but if she didn't move, she was going to be in the way of the moving Carrot Stick. It only took two times at phase four to get her to the point of every time, she was moving off of at least phase two, and I got a lot of phase ones too. She then offered traveling circles at a trot... I thought it was so cool, because it wasn’t right brain at all! She had her head lowered and she was breathing out, she had one ear towards me and her body was curved inward, not out. She was SOOO good.


We had  a really great time tonight. There's no way I can continue what I have been doing and not play with her... It was like.... She became a part of me.