Approaching Hurdles without Jumping

Last night had both highs and lows in training.

I will start off with the lows as any good horse person knows to end on a good note.  The hard part about our ride last night, was I was faced with the realization that the fun part of training was over.  Bentley has learned all the basics and for the most part it was easy.  We can go up and down from all 3 gaits plus halt, turn both directions, bend in corners and around circles and in most cases he will respond to leg yield.  So now we have to start refining our gaits and movement and dealing with some training hurdles.  The excitement for picking up the correct lead or halting squarely is not nearly as high as those first moments in the saddle.  Yes last night was WORK.

We have picked up some habits.  Along one side of the ring we veer dramatically into the centre instead of going straight to the corner, but only at the trot, on that one side and only that one direction!  Very frustrating and has been harder to fix than I expected! I found that if I circled in the direction that we veered a few times before we entered the nasty side, getting good bend, he would be more responsive to my leg pushing him toward the outside, but by the time we would lap the entire ring he would forget again.  Looks like we will be doing lots of this in the future!

Also it takes a good 7-8 laps of powerful ground eating, careening around the corners canter before I can get him to calm down, round up, and become balanced.  Good thing is, it is possible!  Still figuring out what cools his jets.  The little girls watching all said "wow you look so good cantering" but that was largely due to the fact he is beautiful to watch, not that we had the best control! 

Lastly, he hates to halt when walking!  We can halt easily from the trot or shortly after trotting, but if we are just walking around the arena for several laps and I ask, he just keeps walking, ears foreword and eager.  Not sure how we got to that point!  But if I trot him and bring him back down, hes happy to halt.  Maybe he is just bored of walking?  I am going to research some dressage exercises which might help our control and see if we can enjoy a good walk as much as a good trot.  He was starting to get silly after a while of trotting without many exercises, so I started alternating posting and sitting and his focus turned around.  Maybe I can find a way to adapt that seat exercise to walk.

Lots of hurdles to clear before we get out on the trails!  Still great progress considering I wasnt expecting to be able to even have a saddle on him by March.

The positive note was we worked for almost an hour and a half, making it our longest and most strenuous work yet.  I haven't really been doing much to condition him, but he seems to have boundless energy and enthusiasm naturally.  After an hour of heavy work (and sweat) I chose to cool him out, but after a few minutes of walking, he was perky again and starting to cause mischief.  So I trotted him for a timed 5 minutes straight working trot before asking him down again and cooled out again.  Well it didn't stop there, after 5 minutes of walking, he picked back up into the trot again (without me asking, grrrr).  If he had the energy to misbehave, he has energy to keep working.  So another timed 5 minute trot was his sentence. 

At that time, he told me he was ready to walk nicely and stay quiet for our coolout.  He seemed to get the picture and behaved nicely at the walk and we did a lot of serpentine, circles and stopping on the buckle.  Finally!  I guess that's the other hurdle I have to get over, stopping when he is ready, not just when I am tired or want to go home.  I need to live up to his expectations as much as he does mine.  I think he knows hes going to be an endurance horse.  Looks like we have a good partnership brewing!

On a side note, I took my car into the dealership to get its routine maintenance, and they made the comment "Do you live on the wrong side of a mud puddle?"  "No, I have a horse"  It all made sense to them then.

Oh and PS, i lied a little about the jumping, he did spook himself once when he tripped and splashed sand up against the boards, scaring him down the diagonal and right to a little crossrail before I really realized it.  A little hesitation then half a jump over it was all it ended up being.

Since he worked so hard, tonight I am just going to go up and spoil him with some nice grooming and snacks.  I think he likes when he is ridden, but I dont want him to start to resent it by working him too hard.  He certainly is a sucker for attention!