Fiddling around

After a couple of conversations with people at the barn and Kate's work with keeping her reins longer, I decided to try a different sort of ride with Pro than normal today. I started with my reins LONG (4th stop as opposed to the normal 2nd) and just let him walk on a relatively loose rein. That didn't mean he didn't have to pay attention, but just that I didn't care about collecting him up. Instead I did a lot of circles and serpentines to get him listening. Even from the beginning he was reaching forward for the bit and seemed happy. Interestingly, with the longer reins he really didn't try to rush. Once I was happy with how he was going forward I shortened my reins to the 3rd stop and then started bumping him forward to get him really in front of my legs and stretching down across his back. Then back to a longer rein for a bit before asking him to step up into the trot.

He immediately went into a nice, rounded back trot and it really felt like he was coming up to meet my seat. We played with that for quite awhile. He was staying round and happy, but wasn't as lose in his shoulders as I was hoping for. The BM was riding with me and I asked her about it to see what she suggested. She had me do a 15m circle at a collected trot in the corner, then half-halt HARD as we came around the corner towards the diagonal and then send him out down the diagonal. The first time I dropped my reins at him and we got nothing. The second time I cut it to a 10m circle, half-halted and then released the energy from my seat instead of dropping him in front. He extended pretty nicely for a stride or two. A couple more tries and he shot off down the diagonal so extended that I think he freaked himself out. It actually felt like his front legs had some SNAP to them as opposed to shuffling. From there we spent most of the rest of the ride getting him settled and comfortable again and playing with loose and forward but not rushing. I also made sure to give him longer reins periodically and send him down and out to check that his back was staying loose.

When we cantered he was sort of rushy and off balance, but once we did a couple circles and half-halts he found his balance and really settled in. I lengthened the reins at the canter to see what he'd do and he stretched down and down and down for the contact and then started falling on his forhand. D'oh! Back to the trot, a rebalance, and then we walked around on a loose rein. I think I'm going to play with this looser rein and more focus on forward (in balance, of course) for the rest of this week and see how the lesson goes. As the BM pointed out, he's really still more of a Training level horse and at this point he should be going in a longer frame so we can work on the throughness of the back. I think we had to collect him more than you normally would when starting a horse to help him find his balance, but now that he'll look for it on his own, we need to help him learn to carry the energy forward instead of getting stuck. I could be wrong though, so we'll see.