Sideways Success

Today I went out to play with Woody with the thought that we will try to work on our sideways without a fence. I am trying to find a happy medium between having a plan and also not being goal oriented. So, I went out to the pasture and he came to the fence and followed me until he decided to go walking off half way to the barn. I stopped and sat on the log next to me, figuring he would eventually get curious about what I was doing. He continued to walk to the barn, and waited by the tack room. He looked back at me occasionally, but didn't make a move to come back. I decided to go and love on Charlotte and see if that sparked his curiosity. It didn't. So I went up to our shady spot in the pasture and sat on the side of the tree where he couldn't see me from where he was at the barn. FINALLY, he came walking up to me, trying to be subtle and starting eating leaves next to me. I got up, turned away from him, and he followed me back to the tack room. I got his halter on and played lots of friendly by rubbing him all over, desensitizing him to my hands. I gave him some scratches and then decided to set things up for success by making sure he could back up with a wiggle of the rope, and could yield his hindquarters and forequarters. He did all that fine, so I reviewed sideways WITH a fence (or in my case the wall of the barn), and he did that well. We have mineral buckets at the barn that I decided to set up so that while he was going sideways down the barn, he could go right over the buckets in zone 3. He got a little worried about it the first time, but I broke it down and was very clear with what I wanted, and he figured it out. Coincidentally, there was hay in the stall next to us, so each time he went over the bucket I gave him a little handful of hay. Then, once he had that going pretty well, I set up the other mineral bucket so it wasn't against the barn. I asked him to go over it, and he didn't understand. So, I went back to the one against the barn, and did that until one time he did it perfectly. I gave him half a cookie I had and rubbed him all over and let him rest. To wrap up the session, I asked him one last time to sidepass over the bucket, and what do you know! He did it really great, so he got the other half of the cookie and some undemanding time. I was so proud of him for applying what he learned from the one bucket to the other bucket and figuring out the puzzle.
Things to work on: Keep setting things up for success during our play sessions so that I make Woody feel like a winner!
~Eden