For your horse to trust you, you have to trust your horse. It can take time to accomplish this but working on a daily basis you can gain trust with small things like handling, grooming and ground work and build to ridden work. Progress can be made onto more complex tasks whether that is at liberty, online, riding lateral moves or even riding bareback and bridleless, but without you trusting your horse he will not trust you and that will hinder your progress.
Today was our 6th CZT session. We did it in the larger area again where we did our 4th session. Today our ground work went very well and apart from the initial ‘getting away from the mounting block’ thing that he seems to have done the last few session, our ridden session was pretty good too.
Firstly our impulsion was there…light off the cues and happy.
Secondly our willingness was there…connected and focused.
Thirdly our flexibility was there…..together in harmony.
And lastly it was FUN. Fun to be in a different area. Fun to have our harmony, focus, willingness and togetherness back.
Short video of some fun doing leg yields today…..few strides one way, straighten up and few strides the other way. Solly and I have to be connected through focus and mind to be able to do this….he looses concentration right at the end!
*
The last couple of weeks CZT has been positive and progressive even though the sessions haven’t always been the same amount of time. Our connection has been getting better, Solly’s impulsion has been getting better, communication and willingness have been going really well and we’ve managed to move from one small area in and around a round pen to over half the field all by doing the same techniques with the same feeling and with the same requests of timing, energy and a balance between fast/slow, left/right, energy/stops and my ideas/Sol’s ideas. Slowly but surely we’ve become more harmonious together and from working regularly, albeit not for long, Solly’s impulsion is improving due to him getting mentally, emotionally and physically fitter and ready to move. Sessions 2 and 3 were roughly the same but with session 3 we had a bit more time and extended the area we were working in a bit more….keeping it positive and progressive.
Here is our second ground session work video….
And our second riding session…..
What I also realised is that it depends on your horse as to how much time you put in. If quite a worried horse lots of small good sessions work well, do a few sessions per week and allow a couple of days off to think about things. Slightly less worried horses can have fewer but maybe longer sessions with a few days to think about things. The ‘thinking’ days are a great way for your horse to think things over and often they come back to a new session with more understanding, confidence and curiosity. Those ‘thinking’ days also help you to figure out where to go next with your CZT, to retreat a bit, to progress a bit to go over what you’ve done or to go over what you’ve done quickly and progress a bit…the last one is where I try to be each time 😉