This week my goal was to do things differently. I still have one more day to go, but I think we are on the right track as long as I can keep this up. Fingers crossed.
Monday and Tuesday were no go's for the barn. However I got to go in late on Wednesday and Thursday - so two days in a row! Wednesday had a bit of a rocky start. Someone came out to ride on the mares at the barn and while we were up at the cross ties (right beside the mare field) Emmie, the mare, decided she didn't want to be caught. She eluded the poor girl for a long time, long enough that it took the whole time I was tacking up. Midnite didn't care for it either. Needless to say by the time we got to the ring he was a bit frazzled. We trucked along though. We stayed mainly at a trot. However we did canter once in our bad direction and got a nice, nice circle - only cut off at the last minute by Midnite. Then we walked around on a loose rein for awhile to calm and cool down.
Thursday it was just me. I wanted to keep it short and simple because I was the only one on the property and didn't want things to go south with no "back-up" and having to head to work in a few short hours. He was much calmed at the cross ties considering there was no frantic field of horses racing around. We had a fairly quick walking warm-up. Just to get him acclimated to the soft-touch spurs we did some lateral work before heading into the trot work. I must say he was much improved with these spurs than our last feeble attempt. His trot work was lovely - we're still not working on going on the bit just yet I know he can and will offer it up occasionally. But that is just not my main goal at this point. It's forward and suppleness. Then his head can do whatever it pleases. Back to the ride though, when I finally worked up the nerve to ask for the canter (after remembering it's failed attempts with the normal spurs) he picked it up immediately and it was soo lovely. When we got to our bends he was resistant toward the spur however. But I didn't push it just because I was sooo happy. His bad direction was no good but hey they can't all be perfect days. I'll take it. We did a bit more trot work over some poles, we had one set up that was like a small oxer just it was not raised at all. He of course stopped and walked over that the first time - such a goober. But he got it the next go around. Then we had a nice cool out just meandering around.
Today I was determined to leave the ring. And that I did. We rode out in the gelding field - he decided to be a bit of rebel today, in a very tame way though. He didn't particularly want to leave the herd when we were walking. So he would stop and refuse to move a couple of times. He would only back up a step or two and then shake his head around. With either a smack on the butt or neck he would walk off. No big deal. He definitely wanted to test mr. spur today. Silly pony. So even though I wasn't planning on going above a walk I ended up doing so. I just wanted to make sure he would go nice and forward - not trying to keep sucking back. Mission accomplished. I'm so happy with the fact we got OUT.
In other news moving the mounting block to the opposite side on the ring to accommodate getting to the gelding field it caused chaos for the poor geldings, including Poncho who thought it was going to eat him when we were walking back to it. I found when I was bring Poncho back out to the ring that all the boys were frantic racing back and forth by the mounting block. Once I had given Poncho his treats and attention I headed to the ring to get the mounting block back in place. Those silly boys watched in awe the whole time. Goobers.
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