Today Bailey was calm and relaxed from the very beginning. I got her busy right away. I asked her to walk then trot four circles in each direction. She likes to break gait on the third circle behind me. I think my body language changes. I do my very best not to think about the last circle and pretend that we need eight rather than four. The changes of directions at the trot we great! My problem was that I wasn't backing up enough for her to have room to change direction without breaking gait.
I asked her to go sideways by the wall, I persisted until she stepped very lightly and calmly.
For the friendly game I did helicopter at zone 5. Bailey was tolerating it, not really relaxed. Still it is much better than freezing when I lift the stick over her back.
I wanted to work on something completely new and challenging for Bailey. I looked at the self assessment list and choose backing up by the tail. I remembered that it took me about four sessions to achieve this with Alex with me standing in zone five using the rope to ask him to step back. I got that with Bailey in about twenty minutes.
We began by backing in zone two working our way to zone five. I thought that was pretty impressive. I started to pick up her tail before asking her to step back with the rope.
One thing we ran into was that Bailey likes to turn around and face me a lot. I smile at her and get positioned to try again. But she is doing her best and licking and chewing practically the whole time.
As always, I asked her to wait for my permission to eat her carrots.