Monday, February 11, 2013

A day without lunging

Last night I decided to skip the lunging and go straight to the riding...I wondered if this would be "interesting" since he had yesterday off.  Honestly, he was a little amped up, saw a couple gremlins but was much better than I expected.  His flat work was not as calm and quiet as Saturday, a little rushy at the trot but he still did a lot of really great stretching.  The canter continues to slowly improve although there are still a few bucks when he feels like it get gets too difficult.  It will take time for him to gain the strength to walk, trot and canter in self-carriage.  I'm very happy with his steady improvement. 

We also did Exercise #1 - A Chute of Poles
It went pretty well, I even got a few nice halts in the chute.  Then I decided since the poles were set at about the right distance, I would trot over them.  He totally surprised me with lovely bouncy steps and didn't even tap the poles the first time through trying to find his footing!  Tomorrow I'm going to try adding and hopefully we'll work up to the four in the next exercise. 

I do have to say that he is showing signs he might be a little bit of a rusher when it's time to start jumping.  Looks like we'll need lots of grid work :-) 

Then I gave Alex a bath (it had been warm enough for him to be out naked) so he's be clean to go back into his nice clean sheet.  I really hate this up and down weather, it makes for a lot of wardrobe changes.

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