I thought that Summy should have his own video topic too so that we can watch his development from a wild and crazy teddy bear to a proud and energetic dressage pony one day far in the future...
The jumping around video from last month:
Crazy Summy
and a tiny little bit of circling work from this morning:
Summy circles
After a lot of walking and trotting with the nose at the ground, we are starting to walk more upwards and with the head bent to the inside now. I have to be careful to keep the circles bigger so that he can really walk on them (unlike in the last scene).
And another one from this morning: we practise rearing and moving away when he is too close to me.
Summy rearing and my personal space
I only tell him (verbally) that he is too close instead of asking him to go backwards, because I hope that in this way he won´t see it as an extra exercise to go backwards, but as an all-time-favourable (and rewarded
) position to be about one meter away from me during this kind of work. So I just stand there and do nothing until he moves away by himself.
The rears themselves have become much worse than they have been in the beginning - more like bumping onto the forehand. We´ll work on getting them back on the hindquarters as soon as we have learned to rear when I stand at his shoulder.
Oh, and sorry about the grass. It´s in the way a little bit...