Left & Right

We made huge progress on left and right last night.Venus has known left and right spins for a while but I haven't added them onto a course. I have tried in the past working left and right over a jump with maybe 50% sucess. I think she is mostly guessing. I would sit in a chair to give no body cues and send her right or left over the jump.

Last night I tried something different. I sent her jump right. Once she did that correctly she easily repeated. I then stood beside the jump with it to my right. She had to come towards me and the jump but I wanted her to turn right over the jump so she had to turn away from me. That took a while but she eventually would come, jump, spin right.

Next I went pastthe jump about to the middle and called her to come jump and turn right. She picked that up fairly quickly. Again it was a right spin rather than turn but that is fine.

Finally in that same position I gave come jump..... right jump. Tada! You could see the lightbulb come on when she saw the 2nd jump to her right. She finally understood the point of the whole thing. We repeated that several times. Then I gave the command come jump and waited to see if she would take the jump off to the right without the command because of habit. Nope, jumped and straight to me. Yippee!

We repeated all those steps with left and it went much faster. There was a serpentine type set up with a 4th jump out there. I used this to practice left and right. I'd send her over a jump give a left or right so she'd turn that way and take the next jump and I'd give another left or right. She nailed it probably 80% jumping away and towards me.

Off topic but a fun note I showed Flirt this past weekend. She's not finished yet and was in the 12-18 month class. Took Best of Breed both days and picked up a Group 3 & 4! Yay for the puppy!