Early lessons

The last couple of days I've only worked Phoenix. I start by refreshing what he knows:
He is desensitized to the lead rope and desensitized to the stick and string part one. The stick and string part 2 looked okay but he'd move at around 30 spanks. But we do have bugs and so today I sprayed him and we got through 40 on the left and 38ish on the right. I also started to twirl the string more and he looked at it quite a bit but then relaxed. The bugs were still out though.

Also the last two days I've worked on yielding the hindquarters part one and backing up 1. Today his yield was some better but then he started to move in a circle around me. Clinton addresses this in his DVD but I couldn't remember and so I'll need to watch it again. His backing up was much better today and we worked some on backing up parts 2 & 3 and he was great.

We had a storm yesterday evening and this morning I went down to do chores and noticed a large branch had fallen on once side of my wood arena fence and busted it up. The branch is 1/3 into the arena :(

Okay so I plan on sticking with the same lessons as today for another day or two. Hope to move desensitizing with stick and string part 2 into the refreshing part and add another skill to work on.