Productive AND sane! July 6, 2008
Posted by kimayars Uncategorized
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My ride with Tigger went MUCH better than expected today! Most of it has to do with the fact that he stood at the mounting block today. 
He did move away twice, but I’m learning how much correction is enough. Too much and I have freak-horse on my hands. Too little and he starts to push the boundaries even more. Right now when he moves away, backing him up a few steps is enough to convince him that standing still is WAY easier.
We moved off into a quick walk, but not racing. He held it together and didn’t run. After 10 seconds the little drama there was ended and we went to work. It was nice.
Today we moved on lateral flexions and getting back our suppleness. For myself I focused on sending him into the bend with my leg, not trying to manufacture it with the inside rein (Damn you inside rein!). We did lots of circles and serpentines. By the end of the first half of my ride he was changing bend nicely and was soft yet solid in the contact. A very nice feeling.
For the second half of my ride we focused on tempo control through my seat. What better way to do that than walk/halt transitions. This is also a FABULOUS way to demonstrate that your horse does NOT listen to your seat and is really good at “dribbling” into a halt. I decided to leverage his excellent skills in anticipation and started halting at the same four points on the circle. After it was clear that he was expecting this, I started adding more energy between points, but still kept in the halts. It kind of worked (I got a few breaks into trot) but he wasn’t too eager to race off because he knew that we were going to stop pretty darn soon. At the end I got one halt where all I had to do was close my fingers on the outside rein, stretch up, and exhale. He got lots of praise and we called it a day on that note.
One thing I adore about him is his ability to retain information. This works both ways, of course, but I know that working the halts next time will be much easier, even if I don’t come back to it for a week.
I didn’t incorporate any lateral work today. These basics felt like they needed to be covered first.
Overall, and excellent ride!
(”Cookie?”)
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