The Rules of the Blair Witch

Well, Mother says she has limited resources at this time for my new camera. I say humans (and Fenway and Grey) like to a have a little visual to enhance their reading experience.

So I decided to put up some footage Mother took of that fateful night... you know, the night she broke the camera by carelessly hurling it toward the ground and then tried to blame me?

Mother only has one other video of attempting to lunge me, from long ago when I was staying at Uncle Jeff's recovering from surgery on my face. The problem with Mother doing the video at these times, though, is that she obviously isn't paying attention to ME, so I have to fix that.

The first, very very short clip is from her ill fated attempt last week. She was staring down at the little black box and not at me, so I stopped. Oh, and she really doesn't like when I turn in during a stop. I am supposed to stay in the line of travel. Well, she is supposed to be paying attention to me! And she's not looking at me, and she didn't say the word, so how was I supposed to know I should trot?

This is out in the small, and the ground slopes slightly, away from the barn area and where Belle is loitering. At times when we lunge out there, I hustle a little bit on the downgrade and you can tell my bad leg isn't perfect. In the next clip, you'll notice it most when I am going on the downhill and at the bottom of the slope. Actually, you probably won't notice anything but you might wish you had some Dramamine. It's very bumpy, because Mother can't do multiple things at once... well, not very well.

Mother decided to look at me and just kind of hold the black box facing me. (You may need more than Dramamine.) You'll notice I listen well to voice command, but still turned in a little bit when I halted. That got me more work. sigh.

Shortly after this Mother dropped the camera and said I tugged it out. No, you are uncoordinated, Mother.

Mother has all sorts of "Guidelines" for being lunged... here are the most important ones I keep track of:

• Stay at the end of the rope, but don't pull. I mess that pulling part up sometimes, mostly when I canter to the right. Even on the super big circle.
• Keep your body in the arc of the circle. 
• Don't stare off into the distance. 
• Move farther out, making a bigger circle, if she looks at the shoulder and says "OUT".
• Halt when told and stay in line. I actually am usually pretty good about that, but with her holding the black box, obviously something was going on and I was keeping an eye on it!
• Pick up the pace requested and stay there until told otherwise. 
• "Down Trot" means shorten up the trot.
• "Up Trot" means move out at the trot.
• "Aaannnnd" means she is going to ask for something else. 
• "AN-AENNNT!" means I am doing something displeasing, like dipping my head to grab some grass.  
• Oh, and just because "Walk" is slower that trot, it doesn't mean stop. If she says walk, I better keep moving.

So many rules!

She owes me a lot more cookies.