Canter for Days

Guys, I'm not ready to say that I'm learning to ride Mort through the bad days but yesterday marked ride number two where things started off poorly and I was able to turn it into a good ride! Maybe Mort is finally training me to be a better rider--I know that's his goal in life.

He started off behind my leg and not wanting to move off of my left leg. This has definitely been a theme lately--I'm sure it's my fault. I know that I can be imprecise with my leg aids when it comes to asking for bend versus sideways, so that's something I'm trying to pay attention to. Yesterday started off with a somewhat grumpy and lazy pony. I had to really shut him down a time or two and give him a clear path forward when he didn't move off leg, but after doing that a few times he got better. Then after working on some transitions and canter he got more forward. I'm not sure what changed his attitude, but I'll always take it.

We worked more on canter yesterday than we have been. I did some counter canter to work on his straightness. He overbends to the right and wants to counterbend or pop his shoulder to the left. Counter canter fixes both of those things because he actually has to listen to me instead of just going into autopilot. He also has the tendency to be a bit "deep" in the bridle while we're on the right lead so I threw in some quick transitions to rock him back more. The more that I gave him to do at the canter the better the quality got. He was definitely working hard for me at this point. I was feeling so confident that I decided to play with the walk-canter transitions.

He does OK on the left lead but really sucks at it on the right. He's a tough horse because of his smarts sometimes; he really anticipates. Anticipating a walk to canter means he gets tight and crooked. I haven't found a great way to combat this yet; the more that I try to correct him the more sticky he gets at the walk. So yesterday I didn't try to correct him at all. I put us on a circle and I'd ask for canter. We'd canter about 3/4 of the circle then I'd go back to walk. Then I'd ask for canter again. I tried to only minimally touch his mouth. The transitions weren't pretty but they were prompt and he got better over the handful that we did. I did the same tracking left with even faster results--but he's better at them that direction anyway.

After letting the quality of canter fall apart with these transitions I went back to each lead and got some good quality of canter again. I almost have to surprise him with transitions and half-halts. If I prep too much he anticipates me or ignores me. Of course, if I have zero prep he gets surprised and out of balance. Horses are fun. We finished up with some more trot including me making him do transitions while maintaining a leg yield or shoulder-in. I'm super mean for that but we did end the ride walking the trail loop through the woods as a cool-down.