Lovely lunging

No chance of walking Bally out after work now, it's just too dark, so it's time to brush up on the school work...keeping the sessions short and inventive to make sure they are positive :-)

So tonight I wanted to work on the lunge and I was looking for obedience, calm, straight and forwards from B. She was in one of her lovely amenable moods, so a great night to really make some progress with her. She'd had a few whoopees that last couple of times she's been on the lunge and I wanted to male sure there was none of that...free schooling is whoopee time if she needs to let off steam - If I'm attached it's a no-no.

In we went and I started off leading her, working off 10ft of line and walking to her inside, using body language and the lunge whip to keep her to the outside track and then after a circuit or two cue her to make small circles at chosen markers, then back on to the track again. I wanted all of this in a nice steady walk....and that's exactly what I got!
Left rein first and B was absolutely super..pretty much foot perfect, What a good girl!!!

Right rein is her worst / fizziest and she gave me a little evasion with a couple of jogs if I pointed the whip at her shoulder to move her out, so I used nice steady vocals and blocked her forwards by coming in front of her shoulder, then letting her walk on as soon as she half halted and praising her walk on so she could figure out what I wanted, she picked this up nicely. Once I'd got a good circuit with six circles we stopped again and Bally got loads of scratches as a reward.

Then it was in for a close up and asking for some lateral crossing by putting her on a 10m circle asking for her front feet to come in on a smaller circle so she is in effect leg yielding. The key with this is to keep the walk very slow and only ask for a few steps at a time. As soon as I could get a few steps with her soft in the hand and crossing nicely we stopped.
Soon as We'd done this on the left rein I pushed her out on a large circle and asked for a nice trot out to get her thinking forwards again. Bailarina gave me a lovely steady trot, nicely tracking up and working herself low to stretch.

So repeated the close work on the right rein and she was pretty much as good straight away which was nice, so again once I knew she'd got it I popped her out and trotted her off on a 20m circle, just a couple of circles and that was plenty enough. I was so pleased with how she'd worked :-)

Gave her five minutes loose to let her stretch her legs as a reward for working so well...and she certainly gave them a kick out and a stretch lol!

Was able to bring her back down to earth without an issue and that was us done. We stood at the gate for a few minutes chatting to my friend Di and B was patient, no fidgeting, just happily waiting to go in..all good stuff

In for a good brush and her tea, then off out into the paddock..great night!!