Blues Tricks

Yesterday was one of the funnest days yet with Blue. When I went out to get him from his stall he actually turned his back to me. My first thoughts for the day were ohh no this is gonna be one of those days. After a little redirecting of energy I had his mind where it needed to be. It only took a couple minutes of of fast moving orders and getting his feet moving as fast as his mind and he was ready to willingly listen. Since he had gotten a pretty good workout Tuesday I was just going to take it easy on him for the day. Because it has taken him so long to catch on to the two rein stop I worked on that for about 30 minutes... its not that he isnt soft he, just collects and doesnt stop for a couple of steps. Afterwards I wanted to do even more desensitising, since he is going to a fairly novice rider, so i got out the tarp which he has already mastered on the ground... but I wanted to test him under saddle. Once he was reintroduced to it I mounted up and shook it all around while standing still. He stood perfectly still with his head down and I could already feel my head getting bigger. Then I started to walk him around while shaking the tarp. Though he didnt completely freak, he did start to try to run from... in the round pen, it was almost like he was running in circles! It didn't take to long before he was back down to being the same old boring Blue and once again I could feel my face just swelling with pride... this used to be a wild mustang that had more than once tried to knock my head clean off. Since I was feeling almost invincible I decided to try something that I had only done with one other horse, I was going to try to stand on the saddle, which was on his back, wave the tarp all around, and try to do anything else i could to scare him... Dun Dun Dun! I rested the tarp on his neck and hopped to my feet in the saddle. Once I felt at least a little steady I picked up the tarp and shook it around his shoulders, barrel, head, and tail. Not even a flinch!!!!! By this time my head was growing so big that I thought I better hop down off my "high horse"(sry i had to say it) before I just up and floated away. So I hopped down and started messing around with other things like "cowboying up" into the saddle, which is basically jumping into the saddle without stirrups. Of course Blue didn't have much to say about this so I starting prepping him for me to crawl under hime. Maybe 2 minutes of prep and I tried it. And what do you know, it worked!! One more stint of standing on the saddle with the tarp and I was ready to call it a day, and what a day it was. In just one day I had stood on the saddle and done everything I could to scare him, "cowboyed up," and crawled under him(which I do not reccomend to anyone). Man I love this horse!! Please leave comments and tell me how cool I am...or what i can do better. For other questions email me at thebartjr@gmail.com. Thanx