Difficult day with Filly

After getting home from a night flight I chilled for a while and then left for the yard.
I knew I would only have the mental stamina for one horse and chose Filly.
Initially we started in the indoor school. I am not letting her roll immediately these days as it come in useful as a nice reward after a difficult section.
Sticking to the plan "touch all over" was the first task. I have been having real trouble in the flank and teat area, but a few days ago having watched Pat in a colt starting video I went in to touch her with more energy. She had always been putting a lot of energy with attempted bites and kicking to stop me touching her and for some reason it had not occurred to me to match her energy in this area. I guess because I never thought of friendly game as being a high energy game. Even Pat hesitated to call it friendly game on the video. Anyway, matching her energy with vigorous rubbing and sort of brush slapping ( a bit like strumming a guitar) she rapidly stopped resisting my approaches. I was still getting tail swishing, but not the spirited attempts to kneecap me that occurred before. As she moved away from this pressure I just followed, keeping it up until she could stand still at which point I stopped the commotion and just stood with my hand on her flank or teat. I would not recommend this procedure unless you are reasonably athletic and have good reactions, you are very likely to get kicked !! But it works.
Ritchie had done some of this for me yesterday as a follow up and I found that she was much much better today. Still the odd kick attempt, but they felt like she was trying to save face rather than actually connect. By the end she was very calm.
A desired byproduct of this is to get her less stroppy about hind quarter porcupine, and also to move the porcupine spot to a place it is reasonable to place a heel while riding. I am pleased to report that this also seems to be working.
After touch all over, place the feet was next and accomplished with reasonable ease. At this point Sue came in with one of the young colts they are starting and it was apparent that I needed to go to the outside school and into the wind.
Filly has had very little training outside recently and so she went totally right brain for a while. I tried travelling circles to get her mind back but with only partial success. She seemed happiest when close to me so I changed my original plan and decided that some follow the rail with zone 3 driving might do the trick.  To start this was also very difficult so to add a place of rest I adapted this to corner to corner training. In this pattern we walk along the rail of the school but don't turn at the corners. We use the corner as a place of rest. This was also challenging to start, but being a predictable pattern for her she soon relaxed in the corners and we had a tolerable session. She did try to come through me a few times whilst standing in the corner but found that I just used commotion to get her back and the corner was really a place of tranquility. In the end this worked very well for 3 of the 4 corners, but the other must have been much more spooky and we only got to an uncomfortable truce there. As it was getting dark I finished at this stage.
Back in her stable I made a point of being the one to feed her and when she had finished I just went and crouched quietly in the corner to spend some undemanding time together. I also rubbed her gently in the difficult spots and was pleased to see virtually no reaction at all. Leaving my hand there the front end got some carrot slices.
I really think that this undemanding time after a difficult session is so important and from my observation find very few people make the time for it. Of course it is not time wasted as I am sure it will reduce the training time tomorrow. I have heard Linda Parelli suggest that on a quiet day take a book and sit in the stable and read. There is also one clinician GaWaNi Pony Boy who strongly suggests spending a whole day with your horse just observing and being there. An Iditarod Dog racer slept in the kennels with his dogs to get the rapport needed to do an 1100mile dog race. (Great book by the way "Winterdance").Even I have not had the time to do that but just 20 or 30 minutes I find can make all the difference. By the end she was snuffling me and blowing in my nose with no animosity at all.

I don't think I could sleep near Filly anyway, you should here her snore !!

p.s James has given me the OK to write about the Plan to Plan course so I will make a start soon. It is going to be a lot of work so please bear with me while I write it up in a manner that even I might understand (which is part of the reason for doing it of course)