Today is Pro's 17th birthday (happy birthday, Pro!) which made our ride yesterday his final ride as a sweet 16 pony. I started out the ride by making myself not give to him when he flips his head against the bit. Considering he started balking before we even got to the ring gate because of whatever it is he's spooking about now, it wasn't his best start ever. There were some geese by the ring, but they've been there for the last four months or so, so they don't make a very good excuse for spooking.
Once we (mostly) established that I wasn't going to give with my hands he settled down more and we started working on correcting our bend. I was going to the right, which is my harder direction with him. He tends to overbend to the inside so it takes me awhile to remember to swap from reinforcing the idea of getting off my inside leg to getting him straight and off my outside leg. Once I took a firmer hold of the outside rein to correct the over-bending we started to get better work. His walk was pretty good and I got some trot work that was really good for our bad side. He never got quite as forward as on Friday because he just wanted to rush and get unbalanced again. Once I got him balanced though he reached forward and unkinked his throatlatch some, so I was pleased with that. While walking him cool I fiddled with keeping the bend down the long side, which he didn't seem pleased with, but was willing to consider.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
Ah, a horse that overbends in the rider's more difficult direction... boy does that sound familiar. Good for you on working through his fussiness and getting some nice trot work! :)
I'm with you on the difficulty of bending off the 'wrong' leg. Skate is very right handed (hoofed?) and I sometimes have to counterbend to get him off that shoulder and onto his rear end. There is a book called "Straightening the crooked horse" that is all about this concept.
Good for you for correcting the overbending. That can be hard, especially when the horse and rider have more difficulty in the same direction. I loved it when Sam and I had opposite weak directions, because we each were better at helping the other then!
Post a Comment