Saturday, June 12, 2010

6/11/10 Alternate Plans

According to the “master schedule” Jen created for us, Ransom and I were scheduled to take a walk down the road. A plain jane trail ride of sorts. Nothing phenomenal, no hard work, just a loose rein dirt road walking exploration.
To prepare for rides like these, I usually ask Ransom to walk and halt in the side yard. This to make sure his mind is on me, and not on running down the road. I hopped on, let him walk loose a little, and asked for a halt. Head popped up, back strung out, and he leaned hard on my hands. Of course, he catches me on a day I’m not wearing my spurs, and I’m not wearing gloves.
More walk/halt in the yard it is. Repeat repeat repeat, argue, repeat. At one point, I was simply asking him to drop his head and stand still in the yard. No doing. Side pass, walk forward, back up, prance, repeat. It was horrid. Thankfully I had my helmet on, because he took a few hops in complete argument there a while.
We spent 30minutes in the yard, on walk/halt. I tossed in a tiny bit of trot, to see if he was hurting. Short strided & ugly, but not “off” that I could tell. Generally a huge grouch. Best I can guess, he’d worked so hard on Thursday, he wanted NOTHING to do with being good on Friday as well.

No comments: