Day Twelve - Rainy Days and Tuesdays

After falling at the end of Monday's afternoon lesson, I figured that I was going to be sore on Tuesday. I took two Advil before going to bed and two more in the middle of the night but when I work up Tuesday morning, I was sore all over and my shoulders, which had absorbed the brunt of the fall were really hurting. I also discovered that I had a pretty spectacular, dark purple bruise where I had hit my chin on the fence. So as I got ready for the day, I wasn't really looking forward to another long riding lesson.
During orientation, John Barr had told us that during the third week of Fast Track we were going to focus on playing with our horses at liberty. So far, I hadn't had much of an opportunity to play with Sonny at liberty and as I drove over to the Parelli Center, I was thinking that today might be a good day to start. So after feeding Sonny and taking him to get a drink, I attached the 22' line to his halter, picked up my carrot stick and headed off to the playground.
Playing at liberty with your horse is a real test of the strength of your relationship because once the halter is off the horse, all that is left is the truth. I've only been playing with Sonny at liberty for a few months so I always warm him up on-line before turning him loose in a round pen. With his dominant personality, he sometimes doesn't want to follow my leadership and a good warm up is essential to make sure I have the proper respect from him before I turn him loose.
Because of the issue we had with trailer loading the first week, every time I brought Sonny out to the playground, I asked him to get in the trailer. Today I wanted to see if I could get him to load while I was sitting on the fender of the trailer. Sonny never even hesitated, he hopped right in and stood there, while I sat on the fender holding onto the lead line. This was a good start to our session and from the trailer, we went on to play some circling games before going into one of the small round pens in the honeycomb.
I wasn't as successful at liberty as I had been with the trailer loading. Sonny would stick with me for a little while but if I tried to put any pressure on him at all, he would run off. Of course, he couldn't go far in the round pen but he clearly didn't want to stay with me and rather than aggravate the situation, I put him back on line. I had been pushing Sonny pretty hard here at Fast Track. At home, I seldom spend more that two hours a day with Sonny but here we are spending 6 to 8 hours every day and after our liberty session, I was thinking that perhaps I hadn't been putting our relationship first in my efforts to complete the myriad of tasks we had been faced with at Fast Track. I decided that I needed to spend a little more friendly, undemanding time with Sonny for the rest of our time at the center.
After lunch, we all went out to the honeycomb area to see a demonstration on riding with fluidity. The skies had been threatening all day and just as John Barr started explaining what we were going to see, the downpour began. I've never been so glad to see rain in my entire life. Besides giving the ground a much needed soaking to reduce the level of dust, I knew the rain was going to keep us from riding for the rest of the afternoon. We retreated to the classroom to cover the theory of fluidity in riding and I was able to rest my aching shoulders. I knew that a couple more Advil and a good night's sleep was what I needed so I could be ready for a full day of riding on Wednesday.