I am not gonna lie, I was nervous about my ride yesterday. I didn't want another disaster like Tuesday's ride. I think Mort definitely remembered Tuesday's when we started, but in the end it worked out OK. Let's get started on another ride re-cap because that is what this blog is all about.
He had a nice, swinging walk to start and we did our normal walk about the property on a loose rein. When we got back to the outdoor I spent a lot of time at the walk. The first time I picked up my reins he hollowed out and got stuck in a shuffled walk. I had a moment of panic that I had somehow broken my horse and he didn't like contact and could never relax again. I was determined to not have the same ride as Tuesday. I came up with a plan to be as soft and as patient and as slow as I could possibly be. I was going to do some walk work and try trot but if it was bad I was going to quit and walk the fence line. I was in the mode to succeed quietly and calmly or quit while I was ahead.
I'd pick him up and let him back down as soon as he asked to stretch. He picked up on this quickly and was soon pushing into the contact nicely. We were just walking straight lines on the inside track. After several happy times of me picking up the reins I decided to try some lateral work and bending, still focusing on trying to keep him stretching into a lower frame. Leg yields were OK with him. Bend and counter-bend went OK. I did have some struggles getting the left bend, so I tried some shoulder-in. He tried getting tight and retracting his neck. I did a few small figure eights playing with bend/counter-bend. I did some more stretching. He eventually gave it to me happily enough. It was time to try trot.
I started with the same method as I did in the walk. I'd ask for trot and when he relaxed his topline and wanted to stretch we'd go back to walk. I did this several times, shortening the walk time to just a couple of strides. He was doing really well. He only was giving me a little baby trot but I wasn't worried about it (yet). I moved onto our lateral work and bending exercises. We had some of the same issues tracking left where he wanted to retract his neck and hide from my hands instead of bending. I worked on it by starting a small circle to the left to essentially force his bend (but not me being the one telling him to do it with too much hand/leg/seat) and when he gave me the bend I wanted I'd let him stretch down and go back to a walk. This was fairly successful.
After I had him working well both directions I started to ask him for a more powerful trot. Tracking right he was happy to start to push with his hind-end. He was still a bit sticky to the left but I didn't make it an issue. I know that his trot improves dramatically after canter, so I threw that in. With him being in a baby trot the first couple of transitions were a bit stiff and he sorta launched into canter instead of stepping into it. As long as he was obedient, I didn't make an issue of that either at this point. We did a few canter transitions and worked on straightness and bend. His trot did improve both directions. His canter transitions improved with his better trot.
At this point we'd only probably been riding 35-40 minutes. I had gotten bend and lateral work each direction in each gait. I had gotten good up and down transitions (including a few trot-to-halt which is something we struggle with). He was pushing from behind and maintaining a strong topline with a soft mouth and flexible frame. I let him have some stretchy trot each direction and we went for a ride along the fence line with Emma.
We didn't work on anything new yesterday. We didn't really work on our problem areas. I certainly didn't work on anything from our tests. I did overcome a tense and retracted Mort with calm, patient, quiet, steady work. He was a pleasure to ride for the majority of our ride.
I 100% do not think that bad rides are in our rear view mirror. I will definitely struggle with myself and my frustration during those bad rides. I hope that someday that will be in the rear view. Mort isn't a horse that can be forced into doing what I want. If he's having an off day I have to adjust my riding, attitude, and goals for that ride. I believe that the more that I do that, the more he'll trust me, the more he'll relax, the less bad days we'll have, etc. That's the goal at least--and it has to be more important than any other goal.
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