Yes, I am still working with Matilda.

I wonder how many of my posts begin with an apology for not writing enough....

I am just going to summarize where we are now and what we are doing, so that I can move forward with you this week.

1) Groundwork:

Matilda continues to excel with all of her basics. I believe we have finished all the exercises in Chapter 2 of our book, including one in which I had to attach a lunge line to one side of her harness, take it down one side of her body, behind her legs and pull to see if she would follow the pressure without knowing where it was coming from. This was an exercise I was wary of doing but Matilda had no problems with it.

Right now we are focusing on just how Matilda responds to pressure. (She should move away from it, fyi.) We are building her response level, using all the voice and visual commands she has learned to help, so that if I put a finger on any part of her body, she will move away from it. We are doing this with the idea that even a small child should be able to move Matilda around with the smallest amount of pressure from their leg. She is better in some places than in others. For instance, she is more likely to give a speedy and appropriate response from her left shoulder than her right. We are working on this all the way from the top of her head down to her haunches: applying varying degrees of pressure and waiting for her to move where and how we want her to, then click and reward!

We are also starting to click for her ears turning forward. As long as I have known Matilda, she has preferred to have her ears pointed back, not pinned back but not far off it. This one is going to take some time. Matilda is such a wiggle worm, I anticipate weeks before she narrows in on what exactly she is doing to earn the click.

2) Longe work:

The lunge work is going really well. I am keeping Matilda on the 10' lead for the time being but have, on several occasions, been able to ask for the trot, drive her through it for 1 or 2 full circles and then ask for and immediately receive the walk and stop. I am not ignorant of the fact that the heat is working in my favor. Ninety + degrees, bright sunshine and high humidity keeps all of us a little quieter in spirit.

I think I can say that I did learn from the last break away. We start every longing session with about 5-10 minutes of me dropping and picking up the whip, making sure that she can stand still while I move around her holding the whip out towards her. There have been many days when I haven't asked for anything from Matilda, as far as longing goes, because the timing or something didn't feel right.

The closest I have come to a break away happened last week (while my mom was visiting, incidentally - she really enjoyed seeing Matilda do the things she has been reading about). I was just working on walk/stops with Matilda and the ATV went by to deliver dinner to the paddocks. Of course Matilda knew exactly what that ATV meant and she gave a buck and trot, I immediately dropped the whip and pulled her nose in while I yelled "WHOA!" She responded and it was over. Just like that. Nice to be able to maintain control every once in a while.

I am hoping for one more solid week of good, short walk/trot/halt work before I move her onto the 25' longe line and give her more space to move. Maybe next week!

3) An introduction:

I want to introduce you to Loryn. Loryn loves Matilda and hopes to ride and/or lease her someday (soon?). Kim hooked us up and she is now working with Matilda, too. Loryn has a lot of experience with horses and riding and I am grateful to be able to share this experience with her. It is also good to know that there is someone else looking out for Matilda on the days I can't be there.

In addition to all the other stuff that we are working on, I think Loryn is going to start working with Matilda on "squaring up" on command and (hopefully) whenever she stops. Squaring up means that when she is standing still her front legs and back legs are lined up, nice and even.


SO that is where we are. If all goes according to plan, I will be at the barn a good amount this week and would love to have some interesting stories for you, more pictures, maybe even a video! Things are cruising along nicely, though. Sometimes it's hard to believe!

Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?

Last night I dreamt that I was dealing with a large black and white horse. The horse was difficult to deal with on the ground, pushy and constantly in motion, and hard to contain under saddle, unwilling to stay at a nicely paced walk or trot. Clearly an amalgamation of the horses in my life, the dream, along with the mirror incident from last week, got me thinking about how horses (and pets in general) perceive and/or reflect us.

I know a lot of horses bolt and like to try to run away but I like to wonder if these two horses that came into my life do it in part because of what they see when they look at me, on some cosmic level. I mean, do these animals pick up on and reflect back the underlying reasons for my getting in the car as a teenager and driving for hours 15 mph over the speed limit (b/c ten over was normal in VA) just because I needed to be moving? Do they see that same longing that was there when I watched my dad race his Trans Am, then RX-7, then Corvette? (Happy Belated Father's Day!)

On some level is there an understanding of that slightly stubborn and rebellious nature that has always been there. ("Slightly?!" I hear my mom say with a laugh, "Do you see these grey hairs??") You know, the one... old memories and stories are unnecessary in order to extrapolate because we all have them. Does it come down the longe line to Matilda or get communicated through body language in ways that I don't understand?

Or is it just that I am aware of these tendencies in myself and they are, therefore, put onto the living things around me, whether they are there in reality or not? I don't really want to know.

But I choose to think that when Matilda looks at me (oh, those rare occasions of actual eye contact), she sees past the thinly veiled disguise of maturity and adulthood and reads the question that has been pushed to the back of my mind... and possibly just there to the left.

"Are we going to canter today, Miss Kim?"

Slow and Boring.... No, STEADY, really, I meant Steady

So, since my last post (you know the debacle of break aways and run offs) we have been taking things very slowly. If you recall, I had to back up to the very beginning and that is where we have remained. Every day, I go through a routine of reviewing all her yielding behaviors and building her stretching routine (stretching the neck by taking her head all the way down to the ground then from side to side) followed by work with the longe whip. I have yet to put her back on the actual 25 foot longe line. I keep her on the 10' lead and let her walk around me at the end of that.

When I say I am at the beginning, I actually mean that I backed up to where I should have begun. A couple of days after the debacle, I had Matilda on the lead and bent down to pick up the whip, she immediately began to walk away at a quick pace. Something clicked in my mind at that point, realizing that picking up the longe whip was a trigger point for her. Over the last two weeks, "we" have spent a lot of time simply dropping the whip on the ground and picking it up.... picking it up slowly, picking it up quickly with a snap. Dropping it in front of her, beside her, or just behind her. Doing this on the left and the right. Clicking and rewarding her for standing still as I do all of this. It's exciting stuff, this asking the horse to stand still whilst I drop and pick up the whip ad nauseam.

Then I move on to the really exciting stuff. I move into her then away from her, holding the whip, still asking her to stand still. whee.

Sarcasm aside, I understand this is important stuff. Even when Matilda is at her best, she starts anticipating what I am going to ask of her. When we work on longing and she successfully stops on command, I move in to give her the reward and as I step back, she starts walking before I have set myself and asked her to "walk on". This is fine when she is at her best, but when she is at her worst it spells disaster. So, we work on her standing still as I drop and pick up the longe whip, I snap it and touch her with it, all the while clicking and rewarding while she just stands there. Then I back up to the end of the lead, get in position, wiggle the whip behind her rear hooves and say "walk on" she usually does and it always surprises me.

This is pretty much all we have done for the last two weeks. She is walking and stopping for me on command reasonably well. Like all of us there are good days and bad days, but the controls that I have on her now seem to be preventing colossally horrid days.

I did buy a halter that fits her and a new longe line, so that when the time comes I have one that is new and un-weathered, hopefully without any weak spots. I put a leather strap across the nose of the halter that I can attach the lead to so that when I pull, it tightens across the top of her nose, adding pressure like the chain would but gentler.

I figure that every day that she doesn't get away from me, I am closer to a world where she doesn't try. How much longer we will have to stay here, I don't know. I am going to try to come up with something new to add into the mix to keep us in a learning frame of mind; I can tell that we are both getting bored with this routine. It's a routine we have to stick to in part, but there is no reason why we can't keep adding to the repertoire. I have to go back to the book and see what else I am missing from our to-do list.

I will tell one funny story. We usually work in the jump ring, since the dressage (aka upstairs) ring doesn't have any kind of fencing. With the summer here, there are days when there are no gaps in the lesson schedule for me to bring Matilda in and we have to work very gently in the dressage ring. I do not do any simulated longing there. Last week while we were working in the dressage ring, she seemed to catch sight of herself in one on the large mirrors that sits at the far end of the ring. It took me awhile to figure out why she was standing stock still and staring. When I realized it must be the mirror, I thought I would simply walk her up to the mirror and let her check it out. As we approached the "other horse" I noticed that Matilda was getting more and more agitated, more bouncy in her movement, breathing harder, tense. I got half way across the ring before the thought occurred to me that perhaps she was challenging that other horse and, of course, that horse in the mirror was challenging right back.

I don't know if Matilda could see or discern that two dimensional image, but having the thought was enough for me. I wasn't prepared to face whatever might have come next from my already agitated horse and we turned around and left the ring. She did continually check behind her the whole way down the hill. I can only assume that she was making sure the other horse didn't follow.

Who stole my horse and replaced her with this she-beast?!

To be perfectly honest, I swore more today than I have since high school. Maybe college. I vaguely remember writing, in the early days of this blog, about not pushing Matilda when she was unfocused and not with me. Apparently, I have yet to learn this lesson. I still feel like that would be giving up or quitting. The truth: it is just smart.

I could tell Matilda was not with me from the start. I don't know how one knows these things. I mean, as we started the review, she was doing what I asked but there was a vagueness about it all. It's just something you know sometimes, I guess.

I was, however, still blinded by the afterglow of last week's triumph and pushed on in the name of progress. Big, bold me, thought surely I could push Matilda through... whatever... and make some progress. Surely... not.

Matilda was on auto-pilot. She started walking and wouldn't stop. I had no part of her. I still started pushing the lunge whip through my hand in order to get it fully extended behind her, like on Wednesday. I got the whip about 1/2 way to the end when everything fell apart. She picked up the crazy trot and was on her way to crazy canter when the lunge line broke close to her halter.

At least I didn't have to worry about her stepping on the line as I watched her canter away, clearing a 2'6" - 3' jump in the process. It was truly amazing watching her take that jump at full speed.

I got a different lunge line and reattached her, but that first break away was enough to remind her of her own potential. The moment we got back in our circle and I leaned over to pick up the lunge whip, she took off and I hadn't a chance. I went after her, detached the lunge line and, for some reason that is still unknown to me, picked up the lunge whip to "gently" approach her with it.

Dumb. She took off again at a full gallop and broke out of the ring through the gate (don't worry, it is only braided baling twine, as far as damage goes). There is nothing like the sound of "LOOSE HORSE" ringing through the quiet Monday barn. Once she was free, she simply ran around the back of the barn, where two people who had heard my cry were able to grab her and hold her until I came with her lead to collect the mad beast.

Tempted as I was, I could not leave things there. Instead, we went all the way back to the beginning. Chain across the nose, clicking for letting me touch the whip, clicking for letting me touch her with the lunge whip, clicking for walking only 3 feet away from me with the whip behind her.... Then we finished with me forcing backs and overs on her. She knows this stuff, for crying out loud, but when I asked, her feet were glued to the ground. I was getting nothing.

I left the barn angry at the universe and extremely frustrated. I will be back tomorrow, not nearly as enthusiastic. I am going to have to slow way down and be very careful. She's gotten away from me twice this week, there cannot be a third time. I have to start retraining that brain all over again. sigh. I have got to be more patient and aware and willing to walk away. Double sigh.

I am left wondering if this was just today? or is it going to be like this every Monday unless I find some other time to get to the barn between Wednesday afternoon and Monday morning? Is that just too long a break? I don't know the answers to these questions yet. It was an exciting day and I wish I had some video of Matilda running wild. It is beautiful to behold.... I hope I never see it again. Not like that anyways.

A Triumphant End (aka Almost a Spa Day)

Tuesday was much like Monday. There was review, there was stretching. I had taken a moment to look at the book that I am supposed to be following to see what else I am supposed to be doing and remembered that two of the yielding exercises in the current chapter are turning around the hind legs and turning around the forelegs. I decided that turning around the hind legs should be an easy one to add into the mix, but I wasn't sure about the other. It had been a long time since I had tried to get Matilda to step out with her hind legs and I seemed to remember that it was not an easy task.

First I stood in front of Matilda and asked her to "over" as I stepped around her in a circle. Piece of cake, she stepped out with her right front leg, crossed over with the left front and we did that until we completed a half circle. We did the same in the other direction. I don't even have to touch her for that one.

Then to check how the hind end moves. I walked back towards her rear end, turned into her hip and put one finger in the middle of that substantial haunch as I said "over." She took a step with her right hind leg and crossed over with her left. I was able to do the exact same thing on the other side.... not bad, so I stopped there. No point in pushing perfection.

The longe work on Tuesday was exactly the same as on Monday, but with less trotting. She was starting to give in to the work, I could feel it! We went through the exact same process of clicking while she walked, then saying "whoa" as she was in the process of stopping. I had to continue holding the longe whip close to the lash, as she was watching me all the time. If I started pushing the whip closer to her, she would immediately try to pick up that crazy trot and I would have to drop the whip and pull her into me to stop her.

At one point I realized she was picking up the pattern too well and she had figured out that if she started to trot I would let her stop (my mind was interpreting what I was doing as "make her stop"). I came to this understanding when she picked up the crazy trot, trotted three steps and stopped, turning into look at me before I could even drop the whip. Not cool. What did that mean? It meant the next time she picked up crazy trot, I had to drive her through it, using the whip to keep her moving forward while my teeny arm held her nose down and in at the end of 10 feet of rope, until she came down to the walk. After that, I had to continue to use light motions from my shortened whip to keep her from stopping and turning in to me. Once we got through all of that, I got a few good steps of walk and Click!

In any event, the system that was used on Monday worked on Tuesday. I saw more walking and a little less trotting and hope springs eternal.... I noticed, however, on the way back to the paddock, that Matilda was pulling this way and that, trying to get to the grass. She rarely pulls on the way to the ring, but going back is a problem. I made a mental note to be sure and reserve some carrots for the trip back next time. I usually don't, so we haven't worked our way down before now.

I couldn't get to the barn until late in the morning on Wednesday and I figured that the ring would be full and I wouldn't really be able to work Matilda. I thought maybe we would have a spa day for Matilda. I've been meaning to attack that mane and it is certainly hot enough here (mid to high 90s) to justify a bath... with actual soap.

Much to my surprise and joy, I arrived at the barn to find a big one hour gap in the lessons! Cancel the spa day, back to work!

I followed the same plan as Tuesday, starting with stretches, backs and overs. We did a full circle around her hind legs in both directions (still don't have to touch her for that) and half circles around her forelegs (index finger alone moves that bulk around!). I must confess that I am now finding the longe work so rewarding that I am rushing through our yielding/ground work exercises because I want to see how she is going to progress on the longe line.

Her longe work on Wednesday was AMAZING! I worked her out about half way down the line, letting her get a little further away from me, and I was able to get the longe whip all the way out. We went from holding the stick two inches from the lash to about 5 feet! Just like you are meant to hold it. I was even able to wiggle it behind her and lay it across her haunch while she continued to walk. Now it was about 98 degrees, but I am not above using the heat to achieve a goal. (Don't worry we weren't out there that long)

With this incredible burst forward, we started working on her walk/stop transitions. Instead of clicking while she was walking, I started saying "whoa" first and then clicking when she stopped. We achieved the ultimate goal, she stopped when I said "whoa" and walked (walked, I tell you!) when I said "walk on" with a wiggle of the whip behind her. Brilliant. No more turning into me when I told her to stop, she stopped with her head pointed in the direction she had been walking. Perfect.

I was so impressed, I had to call poor Kim away from her work to watch. I was showing off with the whip, when I pushed a little too far and she picked up the trot. BUT when I said "walk" she took about 4 more trot steps, then came down to the walk. With the longe whip still wiggling behind her. I told Kim, "I know she's too keyed up to do this now, but she's even been stopping when I say 'whoa.'" And Matilda stopped while we watched. I know my mouth was hanging open.

With all of this excitement, I had to give Matilda a mini-spa day. I attacked the mane. Here is a sort of before and after shot... and I am not done yet. I think it still needs some work, but I am practicing my straightening skills as we go.



We did click and treat every two steps from the stable to the paddock on Wednesday. With that frequency of click and reward, there was no pulling, no trying for the grass. She walked when I walked and stopped when I stopped, but that was 4 days ago now. I'm not really worried about it, since Matilda has already proved that she has a good memory.

One of my next projects is to find a halter that actually fits Matilda. I apologize for the sideways picture (I am still getting used to a new phone), but I think you can see that this halter is being kept on by strategically placed bailing twine in two places. I have tried all the halters at the barn on Matilda and this is the closest fit. As she behaves better and is seen more... well, we all have our pride, don't we?

I go back to the barn tomorrow and I can hardly wait to get into the ring with Matilda and see what the day holds. There's a part of me that is itching to hop on her back and see what happens, but I promise I will not (Mom and Husband). I have a plan in mind and I will see it through to the end... But I'm starting to see what the end looks like. It is good.

Discoveries, Failures and Successes

It's been almost a month since my last post and the reasons are simple. I just haven't had much time for Matilda this month. I've checked in with her weekly, but only 5 minutes here and 10 minutes there to make sure she hasn't lost too much in the time apart. But now it is the end of May. My car is fixed, a job that I was studying up for has begun and summer is here. Time for me to get back to the project at hand: Matilda.

After the last post and before I checked out for the month, my sister had asked if I knew what had happened to Matilda to make her so scared of the longe whip. When I went to answer her I was surprised to realize that I had no real idea. There were a lot of scenarios that ran through my mind, but all were based on assumptions with no real knowledge. (You know what they say about when you assume??) So I went to Kim and asked her why Matilda was so difficult to handle. The answer sort of knocked me for a loop.

Kim basically said that she thought there had been some inconsistencies in how Matilda had been handled and that Matilda had learned over the course of a couple of years that there were people she could get away from and so she always tried and so she often did.

I was a little bit floored by this revelation. All my visions of Matilda accidentally being popped by whips until she simply feared them and tried to escape them flew out the window. Most of my sympathy went with them. I felt so... used.

This is such a good thing because too much sympathy does an animal no favors. Too much sympathy leads to coddling, coddling to affirmation of fear and bad behavior and affirmation leads to an animal that either won't leave it's comfort zone or knows it can get away with bloody murder and does so.

Does this mean I am changing my plan of positive reinforcement with the clicker training? Absolutely not. Does it change anything? Absolutely. From here on out, at least in my mind, there are two separate things going on with Matilda and I:

First, continuing to work on ground manners. This will go on exactly as before, using Kelly Marks' book to help Matilda go forward learning to give people space, yield to pressure, etc.

Second, longe work or Matilda's cardio workout. I will still use the clicker and positive reinforcement, but I have given myself permission to be much more assertive with things in order to push Matilda into work a little faster. She will have to give me A LOT more of what I want at the end of the longe line in order to earn that click and reward!

Last week I decided to check on this longe work to see where we stand. Admittedly not my best idea, seeing as how I had barely seen Matilda for over two weeks, but by now we all know about the slightly reckless side to my nature.

I started her out going to the right and she did surprisingly well. She was not really in control, neither was I, but we looked like we were doing what we meant to do. Matilda picked up the "I want to run away" trot as soon as I had the longe line in one hand and the whip in the other. (It's funny how putting the pieces together - line and whip in the ring - made it seem like we had done almost no work at all prior to this. But there again, two plus weeks with no time together did us no favors.) I managed to keep her where I wanted in relation to my personage, despite her throwing her considerable weight to the outside, pulling away from me. After much asking and waiting and hanging on, she finally slowed to a walk and I was able to use the whip to keep her at a walk for a couple of trips around the circle - until I asked her to stop. (Her instinct, when she realizes that she is not succeeding at pulling away from me, is to stop and turn into me. Getting her to simply walk, not trot or stop, is a tricky thing as it turns out.)

Then I put her on the left... supposedly her good side. Not pretty. We immediately started what I thought was the same process, with her picking up a fast trot and pressing to the outside. This time, however, I could feel a difference. There may have been little to no control on the right, but on the left there was a distinct feeling of being totally out of control. The more I tried to gain control, the worse it got... let me explain. With most horses that have been longed, if you put a little pressure on the line (and therefore on their nose) they slow or stop or turn into you. The longer you hold the pressure, the more they should slow down. With Matilda, the more I held, the faster she went until she was in a full on canter. The faster she went, of course, the more momentum she had to move away from me until she was all the way at the end of the line. It's a little scary, that feeling of no control, especially as you get dizzy after being spun in circles with no end in sight.

Ultimately, I had to let her go and watch her run happily across the ring, dragging the 30 foot longe line behind her as I said a quick prayer that she wouldn't step on it or get it caught on something. I had lost that battle... one I should not have engaged in to begin with.

I couldn't let it end there. I took her lead and walked up to where she was happily munching some grass. Her lead has a 6' chain on the end (called a stallion chain) and I attached the lead to her halter with the chain going across the top of her nose. This is a practice frequently used to help control an unruly horse and one that I never intended to use on Matilda. However I had to win before we parted for the day and I was short on time, tools and energy.

I walked her back to where she had escaped and picked up the longe whip. She immediately started trotting, but with the chain across her nose and the short distance between us, she simply could not pick up the speed and momentum that she had before. With this configuration, I was able to get her to walk around me, while I held the longe whip, until I asked her to stop. Thus ended the day.

Today I went in fully realizing what I was facing, which is always helpful. I brought Matilda up into the ring and we went through a nice long review together. I wasn't sure things were going to go well, as she was super distracted by people being around. She is going to have to get used to it, as summer is here and there won't be lonely barn days for about 3 months:)

All her old moves were there, albeit rusty, and we have started working on some stretches. She stretches her neck by lowering her head all the way to the ground and then bending the neck from side to side. We have just started this, but I am hoping that there will come a day when she and I can do some morning stretches together.

Then came time to start the fabled longe work. I knew that I needed some sort of help with control, but didn't want to use a chain across the nose. After talking to Kim, I decided to hook her up to the longe line so that the line, which is just like a wide flat cotton leash, went across her nose. I hooked it up so that when I pulled on the line it would add pressure across the top of her nose, encouraging her to bring her nose down and in, rather than just pulling her head to the side as is the case when I just attach the line to the side of the halter.

I also kept her closer to me. No more than 10-15 feet of line. The smaller circle makes it harder and more uncomfortable to speed up.

This combination worked for us today. We still went through the same exciting process of Matilda trying to get away, but she was not able to do so. Through some trial and error, I also found that if I picked up the longe whip close to where the stick meets the lash, so that the whip was further away from her, I could work her down to a walk. She still tried to escape from it as soon as I would pick it up but she would give up, not so if I pick the whip up by the handle. When I pick up the whip by the end and hold it out in front of me, she runs and presses until I drop it because I need both hands to hang onto her... then she stops and turns into me, knowing that I can't encourage her on.

After a lot of work, I was able to get her to walk around me on both sides, while I held the longe whip an inch below the lash. I was able to use the whip, in that position, to encourage her to walk on without her running off into that super chaotic trot thing she does. She was only rewarded if she walked until I asked her to stop.

Since I wanted her to understand that the walk was what I was rewarding her for, I would wait until she settled into a nicely paced walk, made a couple of trips around me at that pace, then I would have to click, say "whoa!" and step into her with her carrot at the same time. I think I got the timing right on that one. It's all about multi-tasking.

So, that is where we are. It was a small success on the day, walking on the longe line while I held the whip in my hand, but a success it was. It's a starting point for this next phase and that was all I needed to get my foot in the door. It will probably be quite a while before I actually ask Matilda to trot on the longe line. I think I will work on building the walk until she can walk at the end of the line (maybe 30 feet out) with the longe whip doing it's full job before I even look for the trot.... I'm sure I'll be seeing it in any event.

Longing Matilda

I know, two weeks. I have seen Matilda in the last two weeks, but the visits have been a hodgepodge of stuff. Mostly she had to punish me a little, because I left her alone for a week, by being a stubborn cheese head last week and I didn't want to write about it. I think the only accomplishment from last week that I care to mention is that neither of us were injured during the course of our "working" together.

BUT it is a new day in a new week and we approached it with enthusiasm and purpose!

I am really bad at these self-portrait things, but I tried to get a photo of myself with Matilda. At least in this one you can get a better idea of how huge she really is. With her head like this, on my shoulder, her nose is down around my waist.... Makes me feel brave to see it:)

Oh, I remember one thing that came out of last week: Matilda and I decided that we should spend as much time working in the riding ring as possible. The added distractions of just being in a different place are important and we both need to learn to focus, even if cars are pulling in and horses are being led past. Plus it gives us time to practice being led politely to and from the barn. We will work there when ever the ring seems to be free from riding lessons.

Since the barn is closed on Monday's, we worked in the ring today!

It's hard for me to keep in mind the many tasks that Matilda and I are supposed to be accomplishing at the same time. Lately, the exercises in Kelly Marks' book have been taking the foreground, but again with all of our recent accomplishments and the (sort of) closing out of a chapter, I thought we might revisit the idea and dream of safely and reasonably longing Matilda.

If you look back at previous posts, you will remember that I had desensitized Matilda to the longe line and overly desensitized her to the longe whip - to the point that I can no longer send her forward or move her using the whip. However, I had yet to attach her to the line and yet to show her the whip while being attached to her in any way. I, also, had not done anything with either of those tools in the ring, where any previous bad experience may have occurred. Today was the day.

I put the longe line and whip on the ground in the middle of the ring before I even brought Matilda up, so that she could see them non-threateningly right away. We did our usual review in the ring before I led her over to where they were laying. She nosed them and didn't seem to be bothered with them, so I picked up the clip of the longe line and tried to clip it to her halter. She balked a little, pulling up her head, but she may have just been trying to mouth it.

Once she was attached, I had to get her moving but was not ready to pick up the whip just to "see how it would go". I started walking with her, encouraging her towards the grass, hoping that with the forward momentum I could stop, hold the longe line and turn her head to get a few steps of a circle. But with Matilda, sometimes forward momentum is forward momentum. When she hit the end of the line, her head did not turn in and she did not slow or stop. She just kept moving with me dragging along behind and I had to let go of the rope as if I meant to do just that.

I didn't let go of the rope lightly. When a horse walks away, dragging a 30 foot line behind them, bad things can happen. If she were to step on it and panic, she could really do damage to herself, but I thought it was the best thing I could do in that moment.

Fortunately my phone started ringing at this point and I had some other business to take care of, so I unclipped the line and let her munch for a while. It gave me a chance to regroup. She didn't come back to me, like on previous days. She just kept watching me and eating. With the lack of recent work I really can't expect much though, can I? Since we haven't been working together so much and we were doing new things, I thought she might be a little on edge and didn't want to walk up to her and try to clip the longe line to her halter while she was happily munching. I remembered that balk and didn't want to risk her running away. I took her regular lead and the target stick and used the target stick, along with the "touch" command to get her to lift her head and move away from the grass where I felt I could safely attach the lead.

A new decision to make. With the longe line, I could get more distance between us and be a little safer if Matilda lashed out, but thought maybe I should just use the lead (about 8 feet long) as a short longe line so that she couldn't work up so much momentum and I would have better control. I decided to keep her on the lead. But none of this solved the problem of how to get her to move in a circle around me. Matilda and I have been working on leading and walking together so long that she just sort of sticks with me and refuses to move away. I had to try the whip.

I backed Matilda up all the way to the end of the lead and positioned her so that I was facing her shoulder before I very carefully bent over to pick up the whip. I kept my eyes glued on her, since this very simple action has caused her to lash out and run off in the past. I was able to get the whip and stand up straight without incident.

We worked hard. Part of the time I ended up walking around her while she spun around her center (who is longing who here?) as I tried to get her moving around me. Then she would put her head down and buck or kick before taking off in a run, all the while trying to pull away from me. The whip obviously made her nervous as she alternated between running and stopping and turning to face it, trying to keep it away from her back side.

But then we hit a few sweet moments. She would break out of the run and fall into a nice steady trot. She would circle me just enough times to start making me dizzy before stopping and turning in to face me and the whip. I could pick up the rhythm of it after watching her do it several times and found my place to click and reward. Very tricky stuff. I had to click while she was moving at a steady pace, after she had gone more than a step or two in the trot but before she stopped or exploded back into the run. Then I had to step in and give her the treat as she stopped, before she could turn and look at me.

She never did settle into a walk. She never lost that nervous look in her eye that told me she was very uncomfortable and on the verge of panic. That's ok. I gave her as much freedom as I could, to do what she needed in order to cope, but kept an eye out for those moments when I could let her know she was close to doing what I wanted her to do.

We didn't do this for too long. It was incredibly stressful and trotting on a small circle like that isn't all that good for her, just a few times to get us started and then back to the classics.

We finished up with back and over (she was able to move laterally along a pole today) and grazed a path back to the paddock. It was an exciting day. Another small step to our ultimate goal. We'll keep chipping away at it until she is more comfortable and at ease with this whole whip and moving around me thing. I was very proud of her today. She didn't freak out when I picked up the whip or touched her with it, and I did get some circles out of her. I'd love to see quiet in her eyes, but I can wait. It'll come.