Weekend Ride

Friday evening and all day Saturday were wet and miserable so Mort got both days off. We were supposed to go camping and fishing this weekend at one of our favorite state parks, so I was a little bummed and didn't feel like dealing with the weather that caused us to cancel our trip.

Yesterday was cool and gorgeous when we woke up though, so I went out to ride. All of the horses were jazzed because a certain red-headed mare escaped her paddock a little bit before I got there. Mort was no exception but I decided to go bareback anyway.

We started off better than we had the last few rides. He was "up" but listening. And he was moving sideways off of my leg really well. He moved into trot decently enough when I asked and listened fairly well for changes of direction and bend. I could tell he was a bit distracted but I also knew he'd worked out of that quickly enough.

Those were all of the good things; the bad was that he was still really sticky for going forward. I could trick him into going forward for a little bit but once I asked for sideways he'd shut down to a little pokey trot in an artificial frame. If I had been in a saddle I might have just kicked him up into canter to work out any kinks but since he was fresh and I was bareback I opted for more trotting first. I focused on square turns for a little bit to see how that would work. They help me make sure I'm not riding him too crookedly, which can occasionally can happen when I ask for bend and counter-bend. It had mediocre results, but at least at this point I felt like I could ask him to canter without too much exuberance.

We started on the right lead and it was fairly nice. He was a hair behind my leg, but he was a lot straighter than he usually starts off with on that lead and he was light in my hands. After playing with that for just a little bit I set us up for a really nice downward transition. It worked and I finally had a nice forward trot with him seeking contact with my hands.

I kept that and played a little bit, but once we were walking and I asked for trot again it was a little sticky again. I could get him out of it better this time, but definitely not wonderful the whole time. The rest of the ride had all the regular trot and canter work that we've been doing lately. His trot would come and go between mediocre and powerful but was definitely better than at the beginning. We did our normal ending with a ton of walk and me picking him up and letting him down several times each direction.

I'm interested to see what today's ride will bring. I'm leaning toward another bareback ride. We get our dressage saddle back from the fitter tomorrow, and I don't really want to mess with the XC saddle in case it was part of our problems last week. If he starts off well I'll probably play a little bit then spend a lot of time walking in the field and on the trails. If he starts off sticky I'll just focus on getting him forward and loose and then lots of walking. Essentially, hopefully today will be an easier and fun day for both of us.