Wednesday, June 16, 2010

6/15/10 His very Own Big Boy Bit

Got home from work, R was there, birthday surprises in-hand. The best of which – Ransom’s own snaffle mouthpiece boucher bit. YAY! Got that on the bridle, apologizing to him for the loss of his little French link cheater-mouthpiece. Poor pony..

Lunge line side rein warmup was pretty nifty good. He was light, responsive, and only stiff. I hopped on, and he got crabby cranky. For just a while, the collection was there, his work ethic was good, as was his mood.

Twenty minutes or so into it (including warmup), he started the head-tossing nonsense game again. R walked out to the middle of our circle to watch. And he started calling out.. “Ahead, behind, just right”, lining his words up with what I hoped was Ransom’s bending at the poll.

I’m not entirely sure R got it “right” all of the time. When it felt good, and Ransom was giving me his back, he was calling out “behind”, or “inside”, suggesting Ransom was over-bent. We did this for a good ten minutes, with mostly walk/halt, trot/walk work. There was plenty of time spent at the steady posting trot, R calling out head position.

So I wasn’t real sure if I was over-bending him (*Gasp* Rollkur! Gosh I hope not!), but I know his noggin was all over the place. Total work, nearly 50 minutes under saddle. Way too much, way too long, but some knowledge exchanged and some progress made… I think.

No comments: