DH and the boys were gone so I decided to go for a ride. I saddled Max up and as I got ready to leave my sister came out and decided she was going to tag along in the cart with Nikki. I told her that was fine but she had to figure out how to hook up the cart because I was riding!
While she got ready I trotted Max up and down the road. Of course he was wonderful trotting away from home. Nice, steady, easy trot. When we turned for home……….he thought he could break into a lope. Needless to say we did a few ORS.
When Heather finally got Nikki ready we headed down the road. I would trot in front of her and then trot past her and go behind her and then lope ahead of her and then lope behind her. Max wasn’t doing too badly. Then we hit the neighbor’s house and a little kitten decided to follow us. We are pretty sure he was dumped because he was at the abandoned house the other night when we rode but my sister is going to call to check tonight.
Needless to say he followed us down the road (the little fart kept up with the horses trotting) so when a car came by and my sister had visions of a smashed kitty she lost it, put him in the cart and took him home. I told her I was going to continue riding.
Max and I headed on down the road (of course at a much slower pace since we were going away from home and Nikki had left). I asked him to canter and he had a fairly nice, smooth flowing canter (this has been one of our biggest issues).
I’ve noticed I typically ask for the right lead when I ask to lope so I decided on the way home to ask for the left lead. This is where things started to fall apart. I got the left lead but I also got a race horse.
When I asked him to slow down his head went up in the air and he became more belligerent so I said “fine, you want to lope fast we’ll lope”. I turned him back around and loped him back down the road (away from home). He was still going considerably faster than what he needed to go but we were running out of road (I didn’t want to get too far away from home because it was dark) so we turned around and loped………ran. When we got to where we started on the road we turned around and went the other direction. He wasn’t caving and my patience was running thin. So we loped some more.
We loped to the point that I wondered if he’d ever slow down. The problem was he wanted to go from a run to a trot, there was no in-between gait.
When we got to the corner I worked on flexing him and bending him all of the way home. He was still full of P & V so when we got back we headed for the RP (our RP is oversized and the only “flat” surface I can ride). Once inside I just let him go. He ran and ran and ran. Pretty soon that got old so I decided to do rollbacks on him to see if I could slow his thinking down a bit. Please note I was in an English saddle so when we did the first rollback I almost didn’t go with him.
I’ll bet we did rollbacks for a good 20 minutes. I have blisters on my ass to prove it (I’m guessing this is why English peeps ride in breeches instead of jeans).
He still wasn’t really listening so we did some transitions. I’d lope him a few steps and say easy and bring him back to a walk. Lope a few steps back to a walk. It was dark and I knew I was loosing my patience and not gaining any ground so we returned to the middle of the RP and worked on flexing.
I will probably try to ride him tonight but ask for a lot less of him. Last night was just as much my fault as it was his. I want too much too fast and it’s not fair to ask for it. I know if we weren’t trying to sell him I’d never have pushed like I did.
On the positive side. The guy from the feed store is going to start having roping practice at his house every Wed. night and has invited me to join (he really likes Lucy). He said he’d help me teach her how to track cattle and has no problem burning calves (the other place doesn’t score them out as much nor do they let you track as much). I’m so excited but I’m sure DH isn’t going to be to thrilled that he has no horse to take with him.
1 comment:
Jessie does that too. Her right lead has really slowed but her left lead is much, much faster. I'm hoping to work on the picking up the correct lead exercise. The one where you start by yielding the hindqtrs than go in a circle, bend em done and go the other way.
I know about the sores on the ass. They're a sign of stubbornness ;>)
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