Ground session

Last night, I took Star to the sand school and wanted to have a ground session for a change.
I had been watching videos of Linda playing with Allure most of the day on the Savvy Club vault and I wanted to do the same.

I let her go loose at first as I wanted to do a bit of liberty and start her brain working and focusing on me. Of course, she went into a gallop frenzy, tail up in the air, nostrils wide open, blowing air loudly, going so fast I could hardly see her in the dark school, doing sliding stops, rearing, going back the other direction, bucking, leaping in the air like a deer…Oh boy!
I let her do that for like 10 minutes hoping she would eventually calm down but that didn’t happen…
A lady who was bringing back her horse from the field to the barn had to walk pass the school and her mare saw Star doing her show and she freaked out. She was rearing, trying to escape, going completely right-brain. The lady being a complete “normal” didn’t know what to do and was holding her closer and closer to the head, pulling on her chifney bit. Poor thing.
So I managed to stop Star and went to put the rope on the halter (I don’t even know how that happened given the state of things, I thought Star was going to explode, but she just waited patiently, her tail still up and her nostrils the size of my head). The lady then eventually managed to bring her mare in and Star calmed down a bit…

At some point, Star walked on my foot and I tripped and fell down on my bum, that hurt, but I was fine.

So then I put the 22ft line on and started to do what Linda does with Allure, which was something like this :
Sideways, falling leaf, sideways, push the ball, circle, jump an obstacle, falling leaf, figure 8, stick to me at trot, circle at trot, figure 8 at trot, squeeze game, friendly game with flag, yo yo, jump an obstacle, push the ball, trot behind the ball, bring me back the ball, sideways…Well you get the picture!
I never let Star guess what I was going to do next. All I wrote down above was done in a matter of minutes, I never spent more than 30 seconds on one thing, I was moving from one thing to the other and putting a lot of dynamism into our session.

And you want to know the results?
Well, Star was fantastic. Ears pointing at me the whole time (nope, no bad attitude, no buck, no rear, no ears back…), looking fascinated, doing efforts on everything (she did the figure 8 at trot for the 1st time ever!! and sideways over a pole and jumped some barrels without looking angry or bucking), being a real partner and waiting for more! That was a lot of fun! 🙂

Also I used a flag this time (plastic bag tied to carrot stick) as I noticed Linda uses that quite a lot with Allure. I admit I don’t know what difference it makes, I think it’s level 3 stuff. But the thing is it added to Star’s interest (of course she tried to eat it while playing the friendly game! Not scared at all by it though!) and it was good. So I may use it again next time. Sounds like a good plan!

Today, western riding lesson with Mike. I feel bad, I have not ridden for a week. Not my fault though, it’s because of the terrible weather! So Mike is going to have a lot to deal with today. Oh well…