Orrin's first canter strike-off in groundwork!

Since Orrin and I have been exploring more of his play drive at liberty, he has been offering a lot more ✨sparkle✨ in the rest of his work!
In this session, we were working on the quality of our haunches-in variations at a trot, and at one moment I could feel he was asking to play, so I changed my body language and we got our first canter strike-off in the groundwork position! Because this is a difficult exercise and it was Orrin’s idea to offer it, I decided to change my plan and go with his idea. So we played with this energy, getting a couple of these canter strike-offs in both directions, and then we finished on this wonderful high that arose organically out of Orrin’s unlocked play drive!
It is so important to set our training up so that our horses feel confident in offering new ideas and contributing to the training plan. To offer this to them, we need to find the balance between clarity and flexibility in our training plan. It is not about descending into chaos, where neither of us knows what we are doing or where the goal is for today, but by being too rigid, we can miss these beautiful moments of enthusiastic offers from our horses! 💃🏻🐎
~
Music by Scott Holmes
Licensed under: CC BY-NC
Music promoted by Free Music Archive
~