Doing It My Way, Part II

I had realized the night before that I was trying to be someone I wasn't and that was killing my confidence. I was constantly second-guessing myself, wondering if I was doing it "right".

I woke up excited to work Skeeter. We didn't have a lot of time, but I was going to work her by my rules.

Holy cow, what a difference a day (and a change in attitude) makes. My confidence came flooding back and Skeeter snapped right to.

Julie always says to use the amount of pressure that motivates change. I was trying to be nice and quiet, with very subtle cues, but that wasn't cutting it. Once I went back to what I know I felt so much better.

I asked, expected her to do what I asked and if she didn't, I immediately escalated. For example, she's a bitch about backing. She would evade the correction by just raising her head without moving her feet. However, once I changed my attitude she didn't even think about evading. I gave the lead rope a slight wiggle to ask her to back and she didn't, so I immediately escalated and told her to move with a big, scary correction. After the first correction, it took just a wiggle of the rope to get her to back up. After that, all I had to do was wiggle my finger without moving the rope.

We did circling work (again, I don't think we'll ever be done with that), lots of change of direction, backing, and standing ground tied. She's by no means perfect after one session with the "new" me, but leaps and bounds better than with the "faux" me.

It was a much shorter session than the day before, but when we ended both of us were in a much better place mentally. I'm actually looking forward to working with her again. I hadn't realized that I was dreading working with her before, but now I realize how much my lack of confidence was weighing on me.