...has come to an end. Up until last Tuesday, he had over a week off while I tackled a crazy work schedule and his owner was laid up with an injury. Since then, I have worked with him a couple times in the round pen. My overall plan for the next several weeks is to stay in the round pen, making sure I end each ride with a wet saddle pad! For the moment, the focus is on concepts such as bending, suppling, tackling the false frame issues, and "forward does not = rush" -- ultimately I'm hoping he will get more balanced and less one-sided. Also a chance for me to pay close attention to my aids, which is always good in this lesson vacuum I've been in lately.
So, last Tuesday... because the ground was soggy and Tango was new to the round pen, I started off just hand-walking him in both directions so that I could get a feel for the footing and he could get the looky-lookiness out of his system. (In theory, anyway.) Then I hopped on and asked for several laps of nice forward walk and then trot with loopy reins in both directions to warm up his back and get the motor running. Then we began to work on suppling at the trot, which is where we tend to run into his false frame junk -- I'd ask for him to bend and give at the poll, and as soon as he responded correctly I'd give on the inside rein and send him forward from the leg. Ask, give, go. Ask, give, go. At the beginning of the ride he needed constant loud reminders, but as time went on I was able to use smaller and smaller corrections to keep him moving forward into contact. Both directions! I was so proud. We even did some canter work, and oh wow we both need lessons to help us there, but it was fun. Good Tango.
Saturday's ride was not quite so hot. He gave me a similar nice performance to the left, but tracking right he was a major drama llama. I actually had to halt for a moment to check my frustration. So we spent the majority of the ride "discussing" suppling to the right. And once I finally got him cooperating again, it was time to put this nice movement to work by asking him to give me transitions without falling apart. (He tends to treat a downward transition like an excuse to lose all energy, and the upward transitions like an excuse to get hollow.) But once I focused on asking him to really work through a transition between walk and trot, he picked up on it very quickly. I also played around with "cliff halts" -- neat idea, Kate!
Unfortunately I don't know when I'll get back out there this week, between rain and other plans. But I'm happy with our first 2 round pen efforts!
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4 comments:
YAY! Sounds like some good rides in there. I can't wait to here more about how he does with forward. I have had some interesting thoughts about forward lately that I'm going to post about later.
It sounds like you got some good work in! The suppling to the right will come, too.
I hear you on the rain, I am really tired of it and all of the mud it is leaving behind!
Sounds like it's going pretty well. I especially like how you started him off nice and slow in the round pen. Hopefully the weather will cooperate some for all of us soon. I'm giving the clouds out my office window glares even as I type this.
Glad you like the cliff halts! :) That imagery has really helped me.
Poor Tango - no more spring break. It seems like he made a lot of progress from the start of the session until the end, so that's good. Good job!
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