Ooof. Since last week was the worst as far as weather goes Mort got four light lunges (and hosed down lots) and the weekend off. Yesterday I went back out to work a bit on lengthening and shortening his stride. Spoiler alert: he had other plans. It being (relatively) cool and Mort's time off made him think that taking it easy was not a fun idea.
We started out well enough by hacking in the pasture as a warm-up. He walked very forward, but on a loose rein. He did spot the neighbor cattle which caused some upset (and continued to throughout the ride), but nothing dramatic. He just wanted to stare at them forever. When we got back to the grassy area that is where the future outdoor will be I tried to pick him up some and test how he was listening to my leg aids. The answer was wiggly and wild. He'd shoot sideways, and when I tried to just ask for a step at a time he'd get frustrated and shoot sideways the other way. Quiet corrections were NOT OK. He was jiggy and antsy so I decided to just let him trot to see if it would settle him some. (It didn't.)
The good news is that after some trot he still felt super uphill and ahead of my leg so we had an awesome right lead canter transition where he was happy to use himself instead of dragging himself into it. The bad news is when we went into left lead canter I let him pick the pace for a lap (to see if it helped wear him down a bit), and he did not want to let me be in charge again after that. We spent a lot of time trotting and cantering. We did a ton of changes of direction. When he tried to lean into my inside leg we'd do a 10-15 meter circle (or three). It was way too much work.
Essentially he had reverted to the Mort of a year ago with only moments of the Mort of present day. I don't think I ever really got a calm, straight walk out of him on contact. I could get him to do what I wanted if I was constantly switching it up every couple of strides but relaxing was not in the cards for us. I decided to stop trying because I knew that he was just worked up about the cooler weather and so much time off. I picked a simple exercise that we've been working on to try and not have a complete wash of a ride.
He really struggles with keeping his left bend when we do haunches-in. I've been breaking it down at the halt to hopefully help him understand the concept. I establish the left bend with my hands and a quiet pressure from my inside leg at the girth. I then ask for one step over of his hind legs with my outside leg a bit further back. After he's getting this I slowly start to add forward. When it feels like he's going to lose it I go back to the halt to keep all of the pieces together. We've been working on this for a little while and he's usually really receptive.*
Yesterday this was not the case. His response to quiet corrections (like me putting my inside leg on if he stepped out the wrong way) was to freak out. Not quietly freak out, but kick out, try to run backwards, or do tiny rears. Poor guy's brain was overloaded yesterday by the teeniest thing. Unfortunately none of those responses are something that he gets to end a ride on so I had to soldier on quietly making corrections until he felt he could stand still for a minute. There were a few times where I just shot him forward or dropped all pressure when he even thought about listening. Eventually I got some OK responses to the exercise and quit.
Hopefully today's ride will be more fruitful for all. I hate rides like that because we both walk away feeling a little defeated. I hate having to correct really bad behavior (like rearing and running backwards) because I so want us to be past that point. I hate feeling like I've put too much pressure on my horse, even if it was accidental. Hopefully he'll have somebody home upstairs today and we can have that easy, relaxing ride working on stride length that I was hoping for yesterday.
*I have no idea whether this is a good way to teach haunches-in or not. Tracking right he's getting it just fine, but I had to do something easier for him tracking left.
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