Aspire and I have been playing really well together and she's coming along so nicely. She whinnies to me when she hears my truck pull in and is always meeting me at the gate. Part of this is because she's hungry and is ready to be fed and watered but even after that she's always following me around and hanging out. She's been laying down a lot more which I feel is expressive of her growing self confidence and she's always happy to have me come over and rub and scratch her when she's laying down. This especially makes me happy because she's not viewing me as a threat at all and is welcoming the attention in such a vulnerable position.
Lately at the end of a play session I've been taking her halter off in a sitting position. Just to practice head down and get in good habits of really asking her to stay with me while I'm compromised by sitting and not leave as I'm trying to remove her halter. Which has never really been an issue but I like to do different things to keep it interesting. When I take her halter off she just stands there with me and I have been taking this opportunity to rub her face, scratch her mouth, play with her gums, rub her ears, scratch under her jaw - everywhere that feels good and she LOVES it! She will start to do a lot of licking and chewing, yawning, head shaking, deep breathing - all signs of relaxation... I have a couple thoughts on this.
One being that I hope that she isn't holding a lot of stress and tension during our play sessions (btw: she's stopped doing that weird sleepy eyes / introverted thing) and can only release it when all the pressure is off and I'm just loving on her at liberty. I hope that she doesn't need me to do that to release the tension - because while I'm happy to help, I don't want to cause that in her while we play. My other thought is that it could just be that she's fine the whole time but simply really loves that bonding time after we play and I'm rubbing her head. It could just mean a lot to her and really relax her. She'll often just stand with her head hanging over me while I'm sitting, eyes half closed, leg cocked, just enjoying my company. I really like this time we spend together and I feel it is really important and means something to her. The other day I was sitting on a barrel and lay back on it and she just bent down and rest her chin on my chest and twizzled her top lip against my neck and took a deep breath. We sat that way for a while until her head started to crush me as she kept relaxing into me. Sweet though. :)
Thoughts anyone? I really appreciate the feedback.
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