Day 2: Flexing and Rollbacks On The Ground

Today I got out Ollie once again for groundwork training. We focused today on lots of lateral flexion and rollbacks on the ground (or, Lunging for Respect stage 2. That is what it is technically called in the Clinton Anderson Fundamentals). It was even more windy today so Ollie was a bit jumpy but not as bad as yesterday. Still wanted to be in as close to me as possible without being in my space. He was very responsive and did all of the backing up stages with the slightest amount of pressure. 

Clinton Anderson uses rollbacks to get some of the energy off of the horse. Rollbacks drain a horses energy quickly and get him using the thinking side of his brain quickly because of all of the changes of direction. To get Ollie's mind on me I spent about 6-7 minutes on Rollbacks, and to get him to have a soft circle with a lot of slack on the lead rope I also did some Lunging For Respect stage 1. After he was focusing 100 percent on me I did some light desensitizing and then did about 12 minutes of flexing. The end goal is to pick up the rein with your finger and use the lightest amount of pressure as possible and have the horse bend his head completely to the right or the left. Ollie is better on the left side then the right, so I focused more of my energy on his bad side. He was very soft by the end and I decided to have that be the end of his lesson. In all we spent about 35 minutes together doing groundwork today. I did not have any pictures today, but I hope to get a few of them tomorrow when I work with him again!

~Alyssa