Harley and I again got our game plan together, and headed to the arena dressed to ride. He longed out in warmup, and complied rather well with the neck stretcher. A good solid 25 minutes of warmup, with a few wimpy bucks in to get the boogers off. It's funny when his little toosh hops up in the air, and he tries very hard to get a break to stand still. I push forward with a swoosh of my outside hand and a little kissing sound, and frustrated, he marches on forward.
I hopped on, again with that game plan of walking, halting, and perhaps some trot if I got what I needed at the halt. Almost defiant, Harley proved he either learned from the last ride lesson, or he just had the wigglies previous that were gone today. He stopped square, and still, without moving. A few times his feet were off square, but he stopped, and stood there. The only movement in his rear end? His back leg relaxing, and cocking forward in ease. Baby Baby...
Delighted with these new stops, I decided to begin introducing walk on contact. I would shorten my reins just a smidge, and if I got any kind of relaxing response from Harley, I was going to release rein pressure. (See that.. Was Going To). Harley decided this was new, felt like work, and he would have no part of it. Rather than relax, he pushed his nose out further, twisted his head around, and did anything other than relax. I believe he gave to the pressure a total of three times. Each of those came with a huge release. Four or more efforts following each of those came with resistance, though. He wasn't learning the lesson.
I ended our 45 minutes of work with a good relax to the contact, and a huge release. He wasn't wiggly wobbly in his halts, but he sure didn't want to pick up the new lessons.
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