If it doesnt work, try something else

Carolyn and I played around with Teva and the plan was for her to Canter around in a circle and go over some of the cavaletties and if she is good with that then i would ride the canter for the first time. Unfortunately she had no idea what we were asking her. We would send her one way then she would stop and dart the other direction. Then she would hang back at the very end of the rope bracing and backing then finally darting off the wrong direction. So Carolyn worked with her about 30 mins and then I worked with her about 30 mins and the dang bugs were eating us the whole time.

When she would stop I tried to gently direct the rope in the same direction she was on but she would then jump off the wrong way, and when I would block the wrong direction with the stick and string she would pull way backwards. Then she would stay pulling back at the end of the rope so I tried just backing her and sending her one direction at the same time. Hoping that when she gets tired of backing that she would "escape" the direction I wanted. That way she feels like it was her idea. That kinda worked a couple times but not super well.

Then I tried putting my back against the fence so that when she would do a circle and stop at the fence I could direct her and she would have no other option but to go the way I was suggesting. I did half circles back and forth and back and forth, then stepped about 15 ft from the fence so that she could squeeze through and not have to stop and go the other direction. Making the full circle the easy thing to do, and if she would stop and dart off the wrong way then I back to the fence and reteach her what my send means. Then allow her to do a full circle. That also worked okay and I think she developed some understanding of my "send" cue. The only issue is she would still hang back at the end of the rope.

So the other thing I tried was when she would freeze back there is I would point with the rope the direction I wanted. Give her a minute to think about it and if she didnt move then I would chase her while directing her to the side and tag her if she did not go. That way she can't brace and could not physically go the wrong way. I would also keep her on a shorter 15-20ft length of rope so she could have enough freedom to move and make her own decisions but short enough that I can correct the wrong ones easily.

Eventually she would circle 2 laps each direction without stopping so I called that good enough for now especially since it was 10:00pm and we were working in the dark.

We can just hope she learned something from it all and I didn't terrorize her.