Lunging Magic, Desensitisation and just having fun!

so yesterday I didn't get around to writing my blog post I was feeling a little bit under the weather so spent the evening curled up with the dogs, watching Heartland on Netflix. However we also had a really good session with Magic yesterday too, my dad and mum did magic's stable to save me some time, and I got to giving Magic a brush and taking his rugs off. After this I put Magic's Cavesson on again and then gently placed Magic's bridle on. The idea was to do a little bit more work with him as long as he was happy to do it, it's only over the past week that I have started incorporating more work. So if he wasn't happy then we weren't going to do it. However I was amazed when Magic was happy to go in to the school and just got straight to it. We mainly focused on walk work going clockwise to start with but then Magic picked up a trot so we went with it, we spent a few minutes going this way before I asked him to stand again and then bought him back to walk going anti clockwise, he was really good. He still finds this direction a lot harder than the other direction, so yesterday I kept it to walk work, only asking him to do what I knew that he could easily do. We'd taken the dogs up to the stables yesterday too but they had been in the car, Jack asked Lynn if he could get them out so I then took some time to desensitise magic to the dogs and the dogs to magic. I started with Diesel and Diesel, Magic and I walked around the school, then I moved on to casper. With Casper I had to do a bit shorter work as him and Magic are not the worlds most tolerant towards each other. I then popped Magic in his stable and gave him his feed bucket. Below you can see the video of our work, please do feel free to leave any comments that you might have :).

Today was going to be Magic's day off but I moved that until tomorrow. The main reason for this was because sonny and his owner where in the school, so I though that I would take the opportunity to pop Magic in to the school while Sonny was in the school to get him used to it. That didn't quite go as plan but still I popped magics cavesson on him, I walked him to the school and did some work on standing and waiting, while lynn finished in the school with sonny. I then took magic down to the mounting black and decided I'd start standing on it and stroking Magic, the idea is to get magic used to me being stood above him. It's going to take some time but the idea is to start getting the idea in his head that scary things aren't so scary. When everyone was finished in the school, I popped magic in the school, he was super excited to start with, he was trotting around and trying to push his look but we worked through this and we kept going until he calmed down and was ready to listen. The idea behind this was to make Magic realise that if he wants to misbehave and not do at his told I'll get him to do more work, so he soon realises that the easiest option is to do as he is told. In the end he worked well and he stretched and lunged nicely both ways. before he got popped back in his stable with two massive nets and curled up and a nice big bed.

Another positive for today is I weighed myself again today and I've lost another 5ibs! That means i'm 5ibs off losing two stone since I went on my get fit mission!

Until Next Time

Amber, Magic, Casper and Diesel/