Day 4

So I actually feel like I accomplished a lot today.
Aleythia and I went to Terry's at 10:00 in the morning and came home at noon.
It was the only time of day that we could go without running into something else we had to do. And I still don't have all my homework done. I have a biology MCA pre-test to do and two lessons in Spanish. Fun.
But the fillies were really good.
We caught the fillies in the paddock, along with Ana, tied them in the barn, let Ana freak out, and saddled up.
I worked with Dash first and did desensitizing with the plastic bag, but I'll talk about the other horses first.
I rode Coffie and she went really well. I figured something out. Ya know how I couldn't get her to stand still? Well it turns out that if you get her moving around a little bit and then ask her to stand still she does it, no problem. She did a beautiful trot. I need to work on keeping her in the trot, but she does it really nicely. She was a lot lighter than she was yesterday and was getting the flexing at the poll.
Aleythia rode Frosty and Toffy, so I don't really know how that went. She said she was having problems getting them to trot away from the horses, but they would trot just fine towards them.
Dash.
Is.
A.
Weird.
Horse.
Normal desensitizing process - ya do whatever you're doing that freaks them out until they stop freaking out.
Dash's desensitizing process - rub (shake) it once, stop, let her calm down, do it again.
But I held the plastic bag scrunched up in my hand so that it wouldn't flap, or make noise when it touched her. Then I rubbed her between her eyes with the back of my hand while holding the bag in that hand. I worked my way down her neck. Eventually I flipped my hand over and rubbed her with the plastic bag. It occurred to me that when I was trying to get Dash to accept the plastic bag by her ears (back when she didn't care about the plastic bag) I moved it quickly over her ears and went on to rubbing elsewhere. Giving  her no chance to freak out.
So that's what I did, cause she was on the verge of exploding with the constant rubbing. I rubbed her with the bag once (still held in my hand like a ball), and waited until she stopped moving to do it again. With all the rubbing the bag became more noisy as I went on because it escaped my hand (which was what I was hoping for). I wanted to gradually introduce the whole bag to her.
I did the same with shaking the bag. I shook it once and waited until she stopped moving.
At the end of that session the bag was undone most of the way, and I could rub her all over with it. I could also shake it by her and she wouldn't do anything.
I can't wait to see how far we'll get tomorrow.
I think tomorrow we'll saddle up, desensitize to the plastic bag, then ride. Should be entertaining.