Kate & Pro - 6/25

Ohhhhhhhh pony. Overall good ride with some naughty highlights. WHY he insists on being naughty, I don't know. He started off being squeamish with the bench so I made him do 8m voltes next to it, at the walk in both directions, for about 10 minutes. Whenever he started to balk as he passed, he got BOTH of my legs in his ribs. We then moved that to a 20m circle, mixing shoulder-fore, halts, and counterbend. Still pissy to the left with right counterbend.

We had a few GREAT circles at the trot - I even got to focus on making my posting big and correct. He felt super!! Unfortunately, it's mentally draining because I have to be SO focused to keep him honest and forward while not letting him think of things to spook at.

Then some more walking, some sitting trot, some transitions, some trot-almost walk-trot, and then ran into our rushing problem with the canter. It's the new fad in evasion, haven't you heard? Leap like a bat out of hell into the canter, and REFUSE to let me plug in my seatbones.

Today, I learned (again) that it's impossible to tire out an Arabian. I attempted to ease his rushing by just keeping the canter. Twenty circles later, I'm exhausted and he's just warming up. Ughhhhhhhhhh. Maybe Aunt Andrea can work with that some more tomorrow. ;)

I also learned that he's a LOT better at bucking than he used to be. I blame it on his new, strong back muscles. Yikes. He still likes to throw a big buck when he feels that I was too "strong" (really, a light leg aid) for the canter request. Except now he's strong enough in his back to really put some oomph into it. Darn!