I got Jackson out for at least an hour.
First I did some liberty work with him. I
didn’t bring a whip or other tack with me. I
just worked on “loopy” clicker training and
communicating with Jackson. I am not sure if
the loopy stuff worked, but it got me
thinking about how I do the clicker
training. I felt Jackson and I were
communicating pretty well.
I also worked on refining the lay down. I
asked him to lay down and, once he did, I
was asking him to stay upright and I was
clicking and rewarding him when he did that.
I then got on him while he was lying down
and asked him to get up. We did a few
minutes of bareback, bridleless riding. It
went great. I haven’t done any bridleless
for several weeks and even then it was with
a cordeo. After some of the talks on abusing
the cordeo, I realized I was using it too
often and too much (beside which it wasn’t
working to stop Jackson anyway ). Well, I
rode him and I found that the work we had
done in the saddle of turning with just
using my hips really helped. I tried to use
my body to ask him to turn and stop and back
up and to reinforce those with a click and
reward. I was really happy with how he did!
I then saddled him up and rode him in the
bosal. He did really well. I wanted to focus
on endotapping him. I did it from the ground
and then from the saddle. I made sure he
would drop his head at both the walk and
trot.
He did well cantering to the right, but had
trouble to the left. I ended up doing a lot
of work at the canter and just trying to get
him to relax. I think we did some canter
pirouettes. Not sure.
Anyway, I think we made progress in a lot of
areas!
