Polite, Passive, Pesistance

I started this post last week, so its a week out of date, sorry!

I think that is the main lesson I learnt today in my lesson with Terri Martinus. And along with that line, is a story she told me. When she was in the Florida centre, she was lucky enough to have a talk from a top trainer from one of the water world parks. Now this lady had trained dolphins, whales and other trainers, and one whale she trained was named Shamu. Now just the week before, Shamu had put another of his trainers into hospital. One of the students on the course asked why/how this trainer had ended up in hospital, and the lady said 'we tell or whales/dolphins to send like this (much like the way we send our horses), but this trainer made the movement twice with his finer, and Shamu was such a dominant whale he was having none of it and just went at him'.

Ok, so obviously Olivia is NOT that extreme, but she is like that! She is so very very sensitive but also needs to be TOLD you ARE going to do this.

We went right back to basics today, and spent most the lesson refining the first 3 games. We started to get really picky about what I was asking, and rather than boring her to death, this actually caught her interest. I've never seen my horse yawn so much!