The Flying Tortelli Brothers

Apache and I have been working on simple lead changes for a looong time now (over a year), both when I hack him alone and with my trainer. This week, we started working on flying lead changes. We had done one or two lessons a while back trying to get some out of him, but with little to no success, and then it just sort of fell off the radar due to other things we were working on. Now that Apache is more familiar with and confident at jumping, it’s a little easier to lay some poles down and get him to move up over the pole and actually jump over it, in order to ask for the lead change when his feet are off the air. On Tuesday, we asked for him to switch from his right lead to his left lead, which is his better one as we jumped a pole on the diagonal. He gave it to me twice, even if it was accompanied with a lot of big bucking, out of the four or five tries. We worked on it again tonight, this time going from his good lead to his bad one (left to right) and he did just as well. On the second try he gave it to me right over the pole when I asked after one big buck. The other three times, I had to circle him up and keep asking until he finally swapped, but he gave it to me easier each time. Considering it was the hard swap and that he’s pretty new to all of this, I was entirely thrilled that I got an immediate swap on one of the tries. I am excited to be working on flying changes finally and can’t wait to see the progress. My trainer says I can expect bucking for the first year or so, although it should become less violent.