We made some leaps on the weekend (going into the arena, riding thresholds, zone 3 driving at liberty), so I guess it's only to be expected, knowing my horse, that he should be a little withdrawn. (Though I hoped having yesterday off would change that.) In any case, today Cal did not have much desire to leave the herd.
What did I do? Blow through thresholds so that I could play with what I wanted? Nope! I was good and instead played with tasks around the herd. Finally started with leading by the chin. My half-hearted attempts at this in the past have never worked well. But today, my timing seemed to be good, and by the end I was able to get a step. It wasn't nearly as difficult as I had been making myself think it was. Other thing I played with was sideways towards. Got some decent tries, I guess. I don't feel like I was communicating as well as I should have been. (My arm was getting tired!)
A general observation about this session...Cal was licking and chewing tons more than he normally does. Lots of licking and chewing with tasks (especially playing with lead by the chin), but even more than that, licking and chewing everytime I played friendly. Especially when I played friendly with the carrot stick. I think when he's in moods like today, he expects me to just take him away from his safety and push him through things. So everytime I went back to friendly game it was an assurance that I wasn't going to act like a predator.
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