Lesson Time

Last night I arrived at the barn to find a sweaty horsie.  Too much coat for 80 degree weather.  I want to hold off a little longer if possible as far as clipping goes.  I ride in the evenings mostly so he’s not going to overheat during his workout and I’d like to avoid having to blanket for a little while longer.  I think this year I am going to pay to have him clipped.  I’m just a little bit over doing it, the heavy clippers, the messy oils/sprays, the TINY HAIRS that gets all up in your  personal business…

That'd be trippy with his spots, haha!

Fortuntately is was a nice 68 degrees for our lesson.  Lucky for me and for Pongo because we worked HARD.  I knew he’d be a bit of a bossy pants since he was only handwalked on Sunday (busy schedule that day).  We did a GREAT exercise.  All I have to say is dressage riders and my trainer in particular are one patient bunch of equestrians.  For 45 minutes all we did was…

-          10 steps walk

-          10 steps trot

-          10 steps walk

-          And repeat…

Eventually he graduated to…

-          10 steps walk

-          10 steps trot

-          10 strides canter

-          10 steps trot

-          10 steps walk

-          And repeat…

Ohhhh how he hated this exercise.  He tried to get out of it every which way he could.  The idea is pick the amount of steps that cause the most fuss.  Meaning for us…when I do 5 step increments, he could care less, he’s not really cruising & pushing from behind yet so the downward transition comes without argument.  If I do 20 steps he’s cool because I can start half halting at step 10 and by step 20 he’s annoyed enough by me to do the downward transition.  However 10…10 is his magic number.  

 He’s cruising at 10 steps and sees zero reason why he should listen up and do what I say.  So 10 steps is where we played.  Eventually I got downwards in both directions in all the gaits that we were really pleased with.  They were soft, responsive and straight...and we called it a night with lots of praise and pats.

Tonight, we do it again on our own!  Pushing the buttons that need to be pushed, making progress every ride.

...says Pongo...