I am really starting to understand the Circle Game and so is Enzo(over the past few weeks)! Yeah! I found out I never really was neutral. There were many times that I thought I was helping Enzo by me moving, or me doing too much(trying to help Enzo). Now I send Enzo and LEAVE Enzo alone. What a concept! If Enzo stops out on the circle. I run backwards and draw Enzo to me and then send him out to a NEW direction and go straight back to neutral. Then Enzo will stop again after a few steps. Then I run backwards and change the direction again. I keep doing this as much as we need to. At first I figured, Enzo would never get it. But long and behold Enzo stayed on the circle longer and longer without me having to change direction. Soon I was able to get walk, trot and even canter! All so easily with just a suggestion. How fun and easy this was. We both figured out that all is good when I am in the middle being neutral. Enzo learned, how to keep his mom quiet in the center of the circle. What a cool feeling it has been and how fun that I don't need to do soo much any more(nagging on the circle). Instead of letting Enzo think his way around the circle. In the meantime though, we have broken our change of direction. But that is ok. Sometime you have to break something else before you fix another thing. Now when Enzo wants to stop out on the circle I will run back to change direction. But before I can get Enzo to change direction Enzo realizes that he needs to continue his circle game and takes off in the same direction he was going. So in his mind he is saying. Instead of me changing directions, I understand you want me to stay at the trot. So I will just continue at the trot without changing directions. So for now, I don't make it a big deal that Enzo is blowing off my change of direction, I am taking the fact that Enzo is at least offering to continue on the circle. So from here on out. I will work on getting Enzo calmer out on the circles also. I have noticed that Enzo is not calm while trotting nor cantering on the circle. When Enzo trots it can be a running trot sometimes and the canter is cross firing and kind of crazy. At this point, I have been soo excited that Enzo is staying out on the circle and that he is going multiple laps now. Before I could hardly get Enzo to move nor get him to even stay out! Enzo kept coming into me before. Once, I can get a calm walk, trot, and canter. Then I might experiment with getting the change of direction back. We will see what happens? I am not getting as much time these days to play with Enzo. The weather has turned bad, I live an hour from the barn, and the holidays are taking time as well. But Enzo just turned 17 months old. So time off here and there, while he is so young will be just fine. Keep it natural and create great moments~ Janine and Enzo
