2011 Mark Rashid Clinic - Day One, Dawn Photos

Here, thanks to Lea of A Natural Horsemanship Journey, are some nice photos of Dawn from day one of the clinic - these are the only photos I have.  Read this post about day one with Dawn to understand what we were working on.

Here I'm talking to Mark about what we want to work on - we started with consistency of softening at the walk - you can see here that her head's popped up a bit and she's not soft:

We're starting to get a bit more consistency at the walk here and she's looking pretty good:

Momentarily distracted by the audience:

Nice, forward walk and I'm sitting up reasonably straight and keeping a soft leg to help her relax:

This is beginning to look better - her neck isn't completely soft - there's still a bit of brace at the base - but the quality of the walk is good and she's got the "Zen face":

Taking a walk break and she's somewhat distracted again:

Here I'm working on "allowing" her to move and use her power and athleticism - I'm pleased that she's not going (much) behind the vertical even though she's pretty revved up - you can't see it clearly because of the size of the photo but I'm also pleased that I'm actually not pulling on her here - there's just a soft connection:

And here is the beginning of one of our innumerable small circles to help her calm and self-regulate her pace - I haven't taken enough pressure off the outside rein yet - there should be no pressure there for her to be able to follow her nose around and relax:

Thanks again to Lea for the pictures!