Knight's Ride 6/4/08

Ok, I went out to ride Knight again yesterday after I finished round-penning Pepsi. This horse was an ANGEL!

I've started to groom him and tack him up as he grazes by the hitching post- he just stands right there while I do everything I need to do and doesn't move.

Anyway, I couldn't find his bit and was running around looking EVERYWHERE for it before I finally found it. This horse just stood there and watched me the whole time like, 'Whatcha doin??' Still not moving although he had plenty of opportunity too!

So I get on and we warm up down the trail. We go through the woods and out into the fields. He's VERY up today (not sluggish or sore AT ALL) and as we're walking along through the fields he spooks from some deer. Almost unseated me just because I was so NOT prepared for it, even though all he did was canter for about 3 strides. Anyway, today we worked on trot sets and walk-trot-halt transitions. He didn't really want to slow down, and my seat isn't quite solid enough yet to really help him with the downward transitions, but we eventually got there. He gave me one more good LOOK at something as we were trotting along, but that was it. We worked fairly consistently for about 30 minutes, and the ride itself was about 45 minutes long. We also did lots of serpentines and circles through the field. Going through the field really helps your eye too because you can see EXACTLY where you're tracking and where you're not- so you can see all the ugly circles and all the pretty ones!

Finally, as we were heading back in I decided to see what he would do about this one tiny little log on the trail. (Remember he was originally a jumper!) So I ask him for a trot about 20 strides away and just get into two-point and give him the reins. He sees it and at first I think he's just going to trot over it but at the last minute he seems to go "You'll let me JUMP IT?!!" and just goes whee!!! over it. He barely came off the ground over it because it was so tiny, but he was sooooo cute going over it and just seemed so excited about getting to jump anything at all after it that I gave him a great big pat and called it a day.

So all the horses were good for me yesterday! I hope the trend continues!

Oh, and before I go- he's started to understand that he'll get an alfalfa cube after the end of every ride, and now he just stands and STARES at me until I give it to him. I mean, seriously- he'll just stand there not moving and watch me walk all around putting up his tack and stuff, and he'll even follow me with his head and neck to see when I'm coming to him with the alfalfa cube. Then, after I've gven it to him, he'll happily go back to grazing until I put him up for the night. :)