Day 4: September 20 - Now I Get It!!

I learned so much today! In class we started out by having the horses tied up, and Brother Twitchell talked to us. He asked if any of us had worked with our horses yet, so I told him about Jack. After he was done talking to us, he started working with Milo a little bit. Milo is a lot like Jack. What I learned though, is that when they start running around and bucking and rearing, you should stay with them. Let them do it, rather than pulling on them to get them to stop. That is exactly the opposite of what I was trying to do with Jack yesterday. If you go with them, and match their energy, it will start engaging them more, and they will start having fun. Eventually they will start paying attention to you, and asking you if that's what you are wanting them to do.

Match his energy.

So today, I tried this with Jack. After I was running with him, and letting him play, he calmed down a lot. Instead of running around without paying any attention to me, he slowed to a controlled lope, and did what I asked him to do. I feel like I made a lot of progress with him today. We worked for about an hour, and did six of the seven games. We did the friendly, porcupine, driving, circle, squeeze, and yo-yo games. I couldn't remember the 7th one, the sideways game, though, so we haven't tried that one yet.

Yo-Yo game. Getting him out of my space.