To error is human

Last night MIL and I headed over to the arena. We needed to drop Sis off at Terry’s so she could take her down to the fairgrounds today. I decided to take Max and put a little arena time in on him. I have someone coming to look at him this weekend & I haven’t ridden him much.

Wednesday night I rode him but it was a white knuckle ride. After my ride last night I’m not blaming that on Max but more on myself for having to high of expectations and not realizing his physical limitations but I won’t go into that too much.

When we got to the arena I started off by flexing him. I had him in the full cheek with the dog bone in the middle (remember DH has been riding him this winter in the wonder bit). He still flexed but he wasn’t as soft as I’d like. Once in the arena he felt “ready to go” so we did some ORS at the walk. Wednesday night I had tried to keep him in “frame” while maintaining a slow trot so I decided tonight to just let him trot on a loose rein. Go figure he was much slower then he was the night before.

I felt a calmness over him last night. Part of it has to do with being in an arena. He feels so much more secure in there because he knows there is no where to go. He was trotting so slow that Sis was passing us (this is not good for an English prospect lol).

Our troubles Wednesday night came with the lope. He was chargy and was bracing on the bit. When I asked him to lope last night (on a loose rein) he was dead slow. He was a bit too elevated in his shoulders but I pushed him to move out a bit more and he relaxed into a more cadenced lope.

He was rating my body wonderfully. When I’d quite riding he’d quit moving. His stops were solid and I never had to touch the reins to stop or back up. He didn’t want to go into the far end of the arena so we went there and rested. While resting we did more flexing and then some vertical flexion. I would barely pick up the reins and he would give so we started back out in the walk and I asked him for more.

It is amazing how well they do when you give them an opportunity to work with you and when you take the time to explain to them what you want (which I didn’t do Wednesday night). The only gait I couldn’t get him in frame was at the lope but I don’t think he is physically ready to carry himself that way yet so I settled for a relaxed lope.

I hope he does well for this gal tomorrow but only time will tell. I think Max will tell me if it will be a fit or not. I’m not getting to overly excited about it but it would be nice to get him sold.