Thursday, March 5, 2009

3/4/09 Romeo Yee Ha

Saddled Romeo up Western, but with a loose ring french link bit. I wanted to work on his trot on contact, so needed the English bit.

As I got him going, we walked a while, then I squeezed him up into a lope. All at the same time, he spooked, Ransom spooked, and they squirted in opposite directions. Romeo absolutely took off and galloped around at least twice around the arena. It startled me for sure. When I got him under control, he finally stopped.

We worked on trot for a while, got him calmed & minding me, then back to lope. Two wrong lead departures, and two good ones. We also worked on spins, turns on forehand, rollbacks, and some sidepassing. His overall reaction was great, minus the one blow-up.

I got out one set of standards, and set up a lowest hole vertical. Aimed at it once, not enough effort, he hit it. Second aim at it, he trotted to, cantered from, and gave a nice canter away, which I easily controlled back down to trot. Good job, Romeo!

Total work, about 40 minutes.

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