Weekend Activities

After an exhausting (and exciting) weekend of putting up fence posts and filling my barn with hay for the winter, I headed out to ride Mort Sunday evening. My hands were sore and blistered. My legs were tired and covered in bruises and scrapes. I honestly don't know where I found the motivation to ride. The barn owner had left her truck and trailer hooked up for us to practice. I grabbed a couple treats and the bruised apple from home and headed out there with Mort. I haven't worked on loading since our field trip the first weekend of July (how has July already come and gone?). In spite of me losing track of time and not practicing, Mort loaded well. I'm happy to have finally found a method that seems to work well with him. I give him a moment at the end of the ramp. I ask for a step forward, reward. I ask for a step forward, reward. I ask him to back. Then he usually hops on the whole way in the next time or two when I ask for the forward. Basically, he gets rewarded a lot. We keep it calm and easy. And most importantly, I stay in charge of when he's going forward and backward. I got him on after just a couple forward and backward steps. He got to eat half of the apple. We backed off one step at a time (earning a treat or two along the way). I asked him to step back on and he walked right up for the second half of the apple. We loaded again after our ride and I let him eat a bucket of soaked alf cubes. I'm glad we got one last round of practice in before we take a short, local field trip again this weekend. After a quick grooming, I was on and working on loosening up. I asked Mort to bend and supple into contact at the walk before trotting. This is different than normal. I wanted to address our suppleness issues since we have been doing well with the forward issues. I went into trot thinking the same thing. I'm honestly not sure it was the right decision. I put him on the circle and tried to do some bend and counter-bend and he just wanted to get stuck behind my leg. I wandered around trying to find the suppleness then ask for forward. Sometimes he would do both, but a lot of the time he thought he could only handle one at a time. I did some quick canter transitions in a row to get him in a more forward state of mind and that did the trick. We did lose some of the suppleness, but at least now when I was asking for it he didn't try to putter out. I did the bend/counter-bend, leg yield exercise from our lesson both directions. He got better in the contact again. It's so interesting to me that our "harder" direction gets so much better while our "better" direction only gets a little better. They always say that the less supple direction is actually the stronger direction and Mort definitely proves that to be true. We also worked on our canter transitions. It was clear in the lesson that Mort doesn't come back to me quickly enough during/after a downward, so I wanted to work on that. At first I started off just sticking to the 20-meter circle. Then when I needed more I would ask for him to come back to trot and immediately do a 10-meter circle. It helped me make sure I was actually riding the transition and it gave him a reason to come back and give me control of his outside. I started tracking right--our more supple but less powerful way. It was "meh" I had some really nice transitions where we'd start off nicely, but when I went back out to the 20-meter circle it would fall apart and I'd lose the outside shoulder. It wasn't terrible, but it didn't feel "on" either. After a quick break, we went the other direction. After just a couple transitions he was on it. He was forward, soft, and between my legs. Much praise was bestowed upon my smart boy. I went back the other direction and it had improved as well. My last exercise was walk/trot transitions on the circle. I wanted him to stay off my inside leg and stay soft in my hands while staying prompt. I started in posting trot and couldn't quite get all of those boxes ticked. I went to sitting trot and he would give me all of those, but I lost some of the forward. So I went back to posting and we got everything I was looking for. I did several each direction and he was a good boy. I ended the ride with some walk work. We did small figure eights and serpentines in both true bend and counter bend. I threw in one back-up where he was a champ. We're a little slow to warm-up these days but I know that's 100% my fault. If I get out there to ride him more often, he comes out expecting and wanting to play dressage horse. But if I leave him to his own devices for a few days, I've got to do some more convincing. It's just a crazy busy summer and he lives far enough away that if it's after five, it doesn't make much sense to drive out there. Hopefully he'll be at the property in just a couple short months though! And thank goodness he's getting proper turnout and he staying calm in spite of me not being able to ride as often as I'd like.