 instead of just letting him look out that door, what if I'd say, can you look over to your left? He goes, oh yeah, there's some jump standards. And now, oh, and he's interested in that narrow space. And now I'll say look out that door. Curiosity is drawing him to that door, both eyes, both ears are pricked forward. I know he's interested in that place, but now can I get him off of it? Can I get him to look somewhere else? So he's like, I wanna look out that door. I'll say, can you look over here to your left? A little bit further. There it is. He can go to the left. And I know he's interested in that door. I'll bring him into this place. Now I'll look and present the idea. Now maybe I'll bring him past me a little ways and bring him back. And I'm gonna ask him now to look out the door and I'll turn my front side to it. So I'm not always letting the horse. I'm sort of realizing what they're interested in, using it to my advantage and presenting it to him. Now I might bring my life up just a little bit and see if he can bring his life up. Life in the body, down to the feet, bring that life down. Now the feet came down, but did the life. He's still up, he's still on. You can see by posture, head, eyes. Now he's blinking a little, he's chewing a little. I'd like to see that life come down a little bit. I don't wanna physically pull his head down either. But I start to think about, I put my attention more down here. Now maybe he can make it, yeah? Now I'll go forward, why? Because he sort of took his eyes off of me there. But look at something else, it's interesting that's on the ground. Grid poles, we've got some grid poles to go over. And then I might practice again and I know he's got energy, so let's walk a little bit faster. I can see him in my periphery. He's behind me and we'll bring the life down a little bit, bring it back up, bring it down, we'll bring it up. We're exercising the life, the energy level, just as much as we would be exercising the body of the horse. And we'll see if we can have his attention on the ball. And if I don't think he can make it, well he made it. But if I won't stay there too long, if I feel like he's not thinking about it, then we'll just move on. Maybe I'll move that ball, kick that ball, and I'll come to it. And he might come with me. And notice we can move the hind quarters here, right there, just a little bit. I might kick that ball and bring him to me, kick that ball, bring him to me. Notice I'm not going right at him because that would kill his curiosity. That would put him into sort of a defensive protective flight type state. We wanna set it up to have him draw in and to come to it. And some people will say chase the danger, right? Chase the danger, that's much better than running from the danger, isn't it? But you can see how I'm sort of bringing that ball behind him and past him. Bring my attention down. There, there he pushed it. And so the same concept really where I won't go right at him, but I might arc around him. We're preparing him to not only chase the danger, but to also offset the haunch to cross the hind legs. And so we are preparing him for when we ride him and something scary he would turn and he would look at it and he'd bend and offset the haunch and then come to it. It's excellent, there. We'll let him settle here a little bit. And maybe that hula hoop, I kick that. Now that's a harder one, isn't it? I mean, here's that noise. But again, do you see the pattern where I'm bringing it and arcing it behind him? And that's so important. It's the same way I present flags. Very nice. Now that was great because he wanted to listen to the sounds outside the arena, but then I became more interesting than those sounds outside the arena. See, I'm always trying to find ways to be interesting to my horse. Good job. And then he's looking to me and you can see that his life is definitely settling down. The life of the horse, that's the part you might think about working on more. Life on, let's go. Life off, settle. Bring your emotions up, your life, your posture, come forward, bring it down. I've seen people in hand work horses where they bring their life up. They press in, you're expanding your bubble, horses move back, we fall back a little bit. You'll hear people say fall back to your heel. Press in, back off a little bit. Give them some space. The ability to bring that life down is so important, bring that life down. And then maybe I'd say, no, there's a barrel over there. You think we could make it? You think if I put my attention here and look at it, you hear those people outside. There it is. Bring it up a little bit. Bring that life up more. Bring that life back down. So sometimes they have more life in there than you think they have. And you don't always realize it until you move them or give them something to think about or bring that life up a little bit more. I think it's great. Little more, little more, and a little less. Now his feet stopped. The life in the body is still up. Now the feet stopped, but can we get the life in the body to come down and relax a little bit? Now, maybe we can, maybe we can't. There may be waiting there was the thing to do, but there are also situations where you're just not gonna get it. So you might wanna just go forward again. The life is up. Let's bring that life down a little bit. The body stopped, but the mind, he's still up. Now watch, and we'll see how support the idea of nose between the shoulder a little bit more. Good. Life came down a little bit. Posture changed, ears expression has changed. There's a little movement. Good. And you see that soccer ball, that's great. Let's look at this one. Let's look at this ball here. And so now we could take that ball and it bumped his legs. There, bumped his hind leg again. Great, and I'll leave it alone. Stop and settle. I'm gonna bring him around, circle around, find the other ball. So I do have a plan. Find that ball here. Good, he touched it. Now I might bring that ball, it might bump him in the leg a little bit. But then I'll back off and draw him to it. So he chases the danger, the scary ball that bumped his leg, but now he chases that and he goes, ah, I see, okay. Great. Brought that life down. Now see, he's sitting back, and I really would like him to just sort of bring his weight forward a little bit and then we could get that hind quarters to cross under an offset, under, forward. Good, and we'll let that ball come in. Great, very good. Very good, head's coming down. He's seeing it rolling around, bring them pasts. There happens to be a tarp there. Now I wasn't asking for him to go over the tarp, it just happened to be there. And he saw it. Just like this barrel here, there happens to be a barrel here. Good, maybe I'll just give that a roll, draw him in, kind of bumped it a little bit great. Coming to the corner, I know he's gonna wanna look out that window, so I'll keep going forward, my thoughts will be on forward, we'll bring him forward. We'll see if we can bring him around and oh, there happens to be a mounting block there. I'll just step up on top of it. Now, suddenly my posture got tall, so he wasn't expecting it, and so that brought up his posture. But that's great because that was interesting, and it wasn't overdone to the point of scaring him. We weren't putting him over that edge at all. It was still within his capacity to figure it out. Good, good, we'll just come forward a little bit. There, he's pretty interested in it, even gave him a little space there. He's gotta keep me in mind, so if I pick up on that lead rope there, I'd be able to sort of have him draw to me there. He touched it with his foot a little bit. Now, the only reason I'm not walking away, just because he's sort of there, he got confused, he circled around it. I didn't wanna make a big deal of it because he was trying, but I don't want him to circle around it unless I ask, but settle near it. Now, if his thoughts are on it, if he's thinking tarp, or they're thinking trailer, or water crossing, or jump, or go forward through the narrow gate, if they're thinking forward, let them be, leave them alone. And he happened to, he was stepping around it, so I'd redirect it, but anyway, we'll just come forward there, that's looking pretty good. He's high stepping. We can still encourage and allow some exploration, and it might be my idea. I might say, hey, look over here. What do you see over here? And he goes, oh, so all of a sudden he looks at it and they smell it and they move it. So it was my idea for him to go there. But then once I presented it, and I saw, sort of noticed and watched and reading him, and I said, oh, he's thinking about it. Let him go, let him go, and then he could follow through on his own. He could find it and smell it. So you're coming up with the idea, but you're still allowing that horse some self sort of exploration. And so over time, we get a little more precise. You ask a little more of the horse, right? Next time when you're with your horse, think of the word communication. See if you're able to direct his mind. You can direct him towards an object, a wheelbarrow, a tarp, a bucket, a hidden treat, anything you can think of. Get better at reading his expressions. That's his feedback, his communication to you of where he is in his understanding. Play with your horse and celebrate the fun you two are having learning together and learning about one another. Let me know what sort of things came about when you were working with your horse with his mind in mind.