Harley was up first. Dressage, side rein longe to start up. A much better behaved horse than the day before. Quiet, submissive, polite. I hopped on after about 10 minutes, realizing he was in a good mood.
The ride was super. He started out quite unwilling to bend, and stiff. Things settled in nicely with some leg yields into the circles. A bit of canter on the circle, then back to some sit to rising trot transitions. Quiet still. Sent him down the long sides in more canter, pushing him to stay up and forward. Things are definitely improving there - I get a better canter on every line. Popped over the trot poles at 4'6" to keep his forward energy going. Finished out the ride with walk/halt and trot/halt/trot transitions. I'd let him halt or stand just long enough to rock back before sending him off into more trot. Total about 45 minutes.
Rather than ride Romeo, I decided just to longe him. Good choice, me, good choice. He took off at a gallop, and with every rollback transition (encouraged by a longe whip), he got wilder and wilder. A little slip & slide on his part for not paying attention, he started to settle, finally. By the end of a half hour, I had him backing up with a wiggle of the longe whip, from at least 15' away from me. No participation on my part. I was able to control the longe direction and the energy without stepping towards him, only by using my arms quietly pointing. Took a while, but I got his mind back on me. A good decision to go back to some ground work and respect, rather than hop on blindly and have another Friday.
Working up the energy to ride this morning, if I'm going to. I want to. My mind says "go". Body says "Oh I don't know about that". Weather says "c'mon if you dare" at 77F and 97% humidity, Belly bug says "antibiotics SUCK". Maybe I'll give it a little while longer, see how yuck it is out there once the humidity backs off a bit.
Meanwhile, I think some couch-time is in order. C'mon puppies (who've already run all over the back yard and wrestled/played hard enough they're all catching some Zzzzzz's on the floor around me, let's go rest a bit, okay?
1 comment:
Yoicks! That's a lot of energy - glad to hear you're feeling better, too!
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