Harley's warmup was cute. Quiet, though he had a little sparkle going on in his eyes, like he was ready for it. Mosquitoes were ramping up in the arena as well that morning. Yay. A huge disadvantage to rainfall. Though not a puddle in sight, anywhere within MILES of the arena, somehow they found enough moisture to breed and sprout in. ugly evil monsters.
Hopped on, after swatting some bugs off. Felt a bit bad for him, with the tail and ears both saying, "Ew! Bugs!" Very quickly worked into a trot, and Harley soon realized if he moved quickly, the bugs weren't as nibbly.
Speedy work! Fun at that. Harley worked very nicely in the trot, and after some argument of bit pressure, I started getting very nice direction changes, short diagonals, and a bit of stretch. Settled into working walk, and eased into free walk, only until the mosquitoes began their meal again. Straight back to trot.
Canter work was lazy. Once in it, he used any amount of bit pressure without leg from me as a sign to go right back into trot. Admitting I was frustrated with the lazy, I squeezed pretty hard on one request left. Harley responded promptly, but with the wrong lead. My bad.. I did it. Back to trot, and a lighter ask, the left lead was correct.
We worked a total of 45 minutes. At that point, I let the mosquitoes win, and we departed the arena. Nothing else planned for that day, other than a new solution for the bugs. boo hiss. .
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