Those Little Spots

I went out to play last weekend with the intention of working with Woody on the ground and possibly bareback riding around some. I haltered him, put the 22 foot line on him, and sent him out the gate to go play. He was not really with me, even from the beginning. So, I thought, the right thing to do was to get his attention by doing something big to grab his attention; to ask him to do something and if he didn't do something big to say, "you should really pay attention!" So I asked him to send off, which he did kind of distractedly, so I said "GO!" and he went. We then worked on transitions on the circle which he did "just ok", so I kept persisting and when he didn't do what I wanted I would get big. I began to notice a trend.  I began to notice the more I got big the more he didn't respond to, or tuned out, the big, so I had to get bigger. Evenutally I was getting so big and getting so little in response from him, that it required me to take a step back and think about the situation. Obviously this tactic was not working because he was going from bad to worse. This is when I had an idea.
I asked him to back up gently, which he did, but I paid really close attention to his face, body, and most importantly, where his thought was. I saw that everytime I asked him to back up he stepped over a little bit to the left and looked away from me toward the left. So, the next time I asked him to back up and I saw that foot and that thought leave, I stepped to the right and brought the rope over gently so he looked back to me. I then continued to ask for the back up, and when he looked away or stepped off course, I brought him back to me. He backed all the way up like this, a little bit at a time, stopping when necessary to get his thought back, and then I let him sit for a long time. He sighed, licked and chewed, and put his head down some. This was a good sign.
I then applied this same concept of looking for those little spots and correcting them gently to a Stick to Me type exercise. I asked him to be beside me along the fence line (he was closest to the fence and I was positioned at his shoulder), and to really tune in to my body language when I sped up, slowed down, stopped, and backed up. He did good with this, but it was still a bit mechanical and his thought wasn't really on it. I then noticed that everytime we stopped and backed up, his face was over to the left, away from me. So I went about fixing this by asking him to stop, have him check in with me, then get the back up. This really helped him connect with me and he really became in tune with me and my thoughts.
Then the horses came on the other side of the fence to see what was going on. Woody has a tendency to get evil-eared and dominant over Teddy when he is around, so I have been working on maintaining my leadership in these situations. I saw this as an opportunity to work on this. Teddy would come up and stand near Woody on the inside of the fence, and Woody would lay his ears juuust a little bit, I acted on his thought right then and didn't let it escalade by either backing him up until he let go of the thought, or bring his head, attention, and thought over to me. Then we'd continue on in our Stick to Me deal. Our session ended when Teddy came up near Woody, Woody didn't react, he stopped when I stopped, looked to me, sighed, and yawned. This was a really good sign and I decided to call it quits then.
The point of the lesson was to train me to look for those little spots, fix them when they're small, look for quality in the things we do, and have him understand I am in control of the situation when Teddy is around. We both did very well.
~Eden