Thursday, October 15, 2009

10/14/09 Ransom

I romped to Ransom in a tee shirt & blue jeans. Long sleeve shirt coated in bug repellent. Pesky mosquitoes! Ransom was all ears up heading to the trailer.

I had all intentions on only lunging him. Yeah, right! I took one look at his soft eyes, lowered head, and grabbed my hunt saddle.

Let him goof off just a few minutes, and with that nasty winter coat he's growing and the high heat weather, he was tired quick. So I bridled him & hopped on.

We worked on bending inside the circle, counter bending, walk to halt, trot to walk, trot to halt. Trot to halt was u-g-l-y. I let him pick up canter right, stretch his brain a little bit. Transition down to trot, then straight to halt. A bit better, not so giraffe-headed. Turned to the left, he was antici----pating the canter, so I rode rising trot to sitting trot to walk. When he settled in to the unexpected, I let him canter. Nice & easy, but a bit harder to keep my leg off enough that he didn't read it as a cue to move out more. Back down to trot, straight to halt. Again, a little better.

Rode for about 40 minutes including a lot of walk to free walk to halts and collected walk to halt. Each one was a bit better than the last.

Lesson tonight! Yippee yahoo!

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