Getting Back into the Hang of Things

On Sunday I started by letting Gambler loose in the arena in his halter. Whenever I play with Gambler at liberty he runs (or walks) away from me to get out of work. The goal is to show Gambler that my presence doesn't always mean work. I took some pictures of him playing with his little ball. I wrapped a barrel in a tarp to make it more exciting and he had a lot of fun biting the tarp and then faux spooking. Sadly, I didn't get any pictures of him jumping backwards away from the "scary" barrel. 

When Gambler lost interest in biting the ball and running away from the tarp-covered barrel, I clipped the 12' line onto his halter and played some games. 

I've been focusing on "drift" with Gambler. He prefers to either be in my face or on the other side of the pasture, so I've been asking him to linger somewhere in between while we play our games. 

At this point Marguerite brought Kezi into the barn and tacked her up. Gambler and I are watching her catch Kezi here. 

While Kezi was in the barn, Gambler started to get anxious. He wanted to run in circles, so instead I groomed him. He is becoming more emotionally mature, able to handle longer separations from Kezi without freaking out. 

When Marguerite was riding Kezi in the arena, we played the squeeze game with a couple of barrels. 

At first Gambler made up something scary and spooked at it, but I knew he was just testing me because Kezi was in the arena. I ignored him and he settled down. 

Scooting the barrels closer together.

Then I led Gambler over to the tarpy barrel (next to the horse-eating-trees).

We played the circling game. If Gambler wanted to go around the barrel to the outside, I let him.

If he wanted to go around on the inside, I let him.

If he had wanted to jump it, I would have let him. The only requirement was to keep circling.

Gambler just wanted to paw it.

He partially jumped it once, so I rewarded him by moving on to the next game. 

We circled over this jump again.

Raising the jump a hole. 

Gambler was lazily trotting over the jump, so I raised my energy and jumped a little beside him. 

We did more than just jumping, but these are the only pictures I have. Gambler and I also played some driving game for forequarter and hindquarter yields. At the very end, I stood on the mounting block and played the friendly game with the stick and string. I would like to start using the stick and string while I'm on Gambler's back, so it's important that he is comfortable with it above his head and neck.