Day 3

Yesterday we went to the ranch around 2:00. When we got there we didn't start work right away, we messed around with our other horses for awhile before starting our day with Disco. My brothers friend also came out to the ranch to see our new mustang and spent the night. When we went into the corral to get Disco he came up to us again but when we went to halter him he walked away. we had to follow him around and rub on him for awhile before putting the halter on. Again my dad put on the long line so we could get to the roundpen. Once we got him in we took off his leads and let him walk around again (we didn't let him walk around for quite as long as the day before, we only let him walk around for about 1 min. until everyone was ready) to sniff around again and see that he cant escape. When i pointed he took off at a lope around the fence for 2 1/2 laps before i turned him and he calmed down. He does crossfire sometimes when he lopes but it is okay for him to do that in the teaching stage, once he understands the lesson you can start to refine it and get a little more picky. He did much better yesterday than the day before, yesterday he started to respect me more and go off of a point. I quit him sooner than I had been doing cause he was doing real good. So I took a step in front of him then turned away and walked off quickly. I let him rest for a few minutes then zigzaged up to him, stood about 2 feet in front of him (a little closer than i should have) and held my hand out, for the first time he actually walked up to me! After that i got my halter and put it on him, again all of my halter work went by really fast like he had done it all his life! Since everything went by really fast and we didn't want to quit to soon we started to do some backing, he also figured this out within 2 or 3 tries. I also had to fix the way I was positioning myself to make me look more black and white. Clinton always says, "Be black and white with no shades of gray." witch means you want to make you body language very recognizable to the horse especially it the teaching stage. I also started lunging stage 2 witch is instead of yielding his then going the other way, you step out in front of the drive line then in towards his shoulder to get him to move his front end over and go the other way. He did really good at this! Today Disco did lunging stage 1&2 with slack in the lead line, It was dragging on the ground all the way! It took him awhile again to get into his pen but he did end up going in and was really calm once we got him in (we didn't have to use another horse at least :).