Today was much better. I walked out with the attitude that I would be assertive, consistent and relaxed, and be a good leader for my horse. We started out with groundwork including keeping him in a faster walk or trot while circling, slowing down & speeding up on command, etc. I circled him over the jump and worked some more on sidepassing. I still don't know why he responds so much better to Tim on this. I think I'm giving him the right cues, but it takes him a while to catch on. Finally we got it, then I moved on to something else.
I saddled him up and got ready to mount. He needs more work to learn to sidepass up to the mounting block...perhaps Tim will have to work on that with him some more. Finally I got on to him and he stood nice & calm after I mounted. We walked around a bit to work the kinks out, stopping, backing up, etc. Then I got to work on the cloverleaf pattern (I moved the barrels out of the mud). We went round & round on left turns until he was more consistent, then the right turns. I think he was getting quite bored, and began grunting near the end. Then I wanted to get him out walking and going faster/slower. He has such a hard time finding a good gait! This time he acted like he wanted to canter, and broke into it a bit--too bad I didn't ask for it! Since he seemed to want to go, I decided to go ahead and ask him to, and we did canter a bit. This is good, considering I previously couldn't get him to do it at all. After that, I had a hard time getting him NOT to canter, but just to gait. When he did gait, he kept veering off to the right--he just can't seem to go straight. Oh, well. We had a good time together and I will just need to work more on the whole speed control issue. I'm sure I'll need help from Tim for that. It seems to help Brego to gait next to Strider, so maybe we'll have to do that some more.
It's been beautiful weather. Today was in the 60's and tomorrow should be, too. Hopefully Tim will be able to join me while it's nice.
No comments:
Post a Comment