Tarp conquered, so what's next?...

Camryn here:
First of all Mom hadn't ridden me in like three weeks!!!  She'd tweeked her back a bit causing it to want to spasm.  It was bad enough that she went to her Vet.  Mom rarely see's her Vet, only ours ususally.  Her Vet gave her meds, and no riding for two weeks.  Mom knew getting in and out of saddle would bring on a spasm so her obeyed.  Next we had a heat wave, over a hundred degrees for a coupla days, neither of us were much into riding.
Yesterday the heat wave broke, so Mom saddled up.  We had such fun, a few big tree limbs had fallen in the storms a week ago, instead of picking them up as she usually does she left them.  So we played walk over the big tree limbs, made plodding about the pasture much more pleasurable.
Today Mom saddled up again.  First though her decided to add even a little more interest to our ride.  She pulled out a blue tarp and spread it out on the ground.  Then she went to get a post and one of the tree limbs.  As she did this, I rearranged the tarp, just a tad though.  Mom straightened it out, I rearranged, this went on till Mom decided I needed to practice my ground tying.  SIGH  So, there I stood as Mom layed out the tarp again then put the post and limb on either side to keep it flat.  Next her asked me to walk over it, "no prob" said I.  I admit however that I tried to pick it up as I went over, but my feets being on it kinda foiled that.  Anyway after I quit trying to pick it up and continued walking over it I heard a click.  I realized what I was supposed to do then and walked over it from every which way.
Mom then led me to the mounting block and hopped on.  After doing my flex, flex, back, flex, flex routine we headed into the pasture.  I wanted to head right for the tarp to play the game more, Mom said "nope, not till I ask you too.  I came to realize it wasn't all about the tarp, cause we went over poles n stuff first, Then Mom rode me to the tarp...

We rode over it from one side...See the tree's all close together, we figure 8 those lots...

Over from another direction.  Yo might notice it's bunched up a bit?  I still wanted to see if it was food a few times.  I mean everything could be food right?

We went on a tour, poo pile on my right, burn pile on my left...

Riding over again, we rode over the tarp lots.  See the tree limb further out?  We ride over that too...

We stopped and just stood on the tarp too!

In between going over tree limbs and the tarp we practiced neck reining.  Mom's catching on to it pretty good!  Actually I turn off her leg real nice like now, so she's adding touching the rein to my neck as another cue.  Pretty interesting the way these humans think isn't it!

Course since all of this is a work in progress I get lots of clicks n treats.  Mom's trying to learn to cue me to turn while backing.  She's having a tough time figuring out how to ask me though.  She's got good try so I'm sure she'll learn how to ask me eventually. Shoot, she figured out how to ride and take pix, so she has potential!
Later