So my lesson on Monday was great! He was easy to bring in from the field since he was right next to the gate and he heard the crinkle of the peppermint. So I brought him in and went to get tacked up. He was such a good boy just standing there. He finally had his blanket on so he wasn't as dirty as he usually was when he didn't have his blanket. So his poo stains on his legs were fading which is good since we have to do our Christmas photo soon.
We warmed up with simple posting trot and some of the exercises that I learned from Ryan Minor. I had him at a trot or a walk, and I would stand up in my stirrups as Hercules would move to the gait he was going at. We did some cantering in circles and a simple lead change in the middle of the ring. I mainly focused on doing a lot of serpentines with him to help his bend and also to get his mind focused on me rather than on the horses coming in. He was good until the middle of our lesson when he started to whinny to the others.
During the lesson, he was a bit wound up since everyone was coming in for dinner. We worked on extending the trot down the long sides and slowing a collecting the trot on the short sides. Hercules did not really like this exercise but we had to get him to listen. We did a lot of halt-back up-trot sequences at different parts of the ring so that he knew that I wanted to stop. He did start to calm down, but he was a bit to mellow when we were jumping. He would just trot over them rather than jump them. Since it is winter, he is bound to be more spunky since he does not like winter very much. I will just have to start working him harder when warming up. Mess around with his brain a bit.
No comments:
Post a Comment