Josie Day 11- first backing

Today I hauled the mares up to where Shayla is training from, (and soon will be living there ) a lovely place with a round pen, small outdoor arena, access to trails and the awesome backdrop of the Skimmerhorns. While she worked with Josie in the round pen, I rode Clancy. Her desire to move her hip away during mounting is much diminished, more like a token protest. Shayla did bodywork on her the other day, she had ribs  out and vertebrae in her neck out, and today I think she had a little muscle soreness from actually having to work her body yesterday in an unaccustomed manner (insert smirk). I did a lot of circles and serpentines with counterbend, and lots of trotting and got some moments of nice softness. We did some sidepass work as well. I was pretty happy with her, especially as there were a lot of distractions with a number of horses in the next pen over and a (gasp!) mini horse pacing the pen not far away. But she was a good girl and ignored them once I started to work her.
As for miss Josie, well, I think I'm still grinning. Shayla worked for about a half hour on getting her to be less reactive to sacking out with the stick and string, she needed to remember the difference between being sacked out and being asked to move.
Shayla says: "We worked on sacking out from the standstill and then once she had that we worked on sacking out with her feet in motion, but she was only allowed to walk. Lots of yielding the hind quarters but not changing direction right away.... sacking out instead."
After that, it was time to see how she handled someone draping over her back.

No problem on that side....

or on this side.....

and once again, I'll let the video tell the story.