Just a quick update about the weekend ride. Between the weather and having house guest-obligations, I didn't ride at all last week until Saturday. It was... interesting...
When I got to the barn, the barn owner was doing some small, well-controlled burns of old hay piles, etc. I was half-expecting the smoke to freak Tango out, but he ignored it as we were tacking up and warming up in the round pen. Good boy. We started off with some nice trot work in both directions, no complaints. Even got some canter work in (not especially pretty, but at least relaxed and more or less balanced).
That all changed when fire trucks came down the barn driveway! One of the burn piles had edged a little too close to the forest and some of the underbrush caught fire, so out came the fire engines. Well, between the sirens and the smoke, I completely lost Tango's attention. He wasn't spooky or scared, but he was very distracted and looky. (I was actually very impressed by his composure, I should say.) I tried working through it for another 10 minutes and managed to keep his focus on me by doing some transitions, but one particularly off-balance trot-to-canter transition resulted in a couple small bucks as he tried to re-balance himself, and once that happened the canter became a lost cause. So I switched gears and focused on re-establishing a calm balanced trot and called it a day once we got it in both directions.
Let's hope tomorrow's ride is less eventful!
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5 comments:
Wow, I'm impressed with him holding it together through the fire, smoke, and all the excitement! When do we get more pictures??
Yikes! The horses at our place start getting twitchy if someone a mile down the road is doing a controlled burn and the wind is towards the farm. I'm pretty sure that they'd jump out of their skins if a fire truck showed up. Pro did impressively ignore the goose hissing at us on Sunday though, so that's something.
Holy crap - fire engines and smoke? That horse is a saint! Talk about bomproofing exercises. Well done!
Haha Tango did a lot better than most horses, what a good boy! I think you did really well with pushing him through the inattention to at least get something right before you got off. :) Good job!
Wow, it sounds like Tango handled all of that well! Good for you for continuing to work with him and ending on a good note, too.
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