Gotta Love This Horse

I worked both Red and Huey today ... Huey only got a mini groundwork/freelunge session that can be viewed at this own blog (http://thehueydiaries.blogspot.com/)...

I caught them both and brought them up at the same time to save trudging back and forth. I let them pick some nice grass on the way, and as we were walking up, there was a bare patch of ground where a shipping container used to sit. Thinking nothing of it, I walked over it, Huey happily followed my lead, and Red decided it was far to scary. I asked him to move forward, and instead, he leapt forward and barrelled me with his chest, knocking me out of the way in his panic. How kind of him. After picking myself up, I led him over it several more times and had him stand in the middle for a few minutes... The only thing I can put it down to, is there looks to be a couple of rabbit holes on the far side of the patch (not near where we were walking), so I assume he thought it was going to swallow us whole... I then popped him in the roundyard and worked with Huey....

When it was Red's turn - I grabbed him, took his rugs off, and gave him a good brush down. There's still so much hair coming off him. I popped the saddle on, did the girth up loosely, stretched his legs and gave him a light lunge to either side. It was extremely windy yesterday, so I wanted to see how his mood was, more than anything else. And he was.... same old Red - should have guessed eh?! hehe

After that, I put his bridle on, tightened the girth and hopped on. We started with some basic circle work at the work. I wanted to see if he remembered the bend work I taught him the week before. Which he did!! Clever boy. We have a few stiff moments here and there, but generally, he'll bend around my leg and have his eye towards the circle. Trot work is the same as far as bend goes - a few stiff moments, but generally the beginnings of our flexion is there.

His trot work is getting nicer and nicer, as I keep saying. He's rounding down more consistently on his own now (and I'm still not actually asking him to)... He's bobbing his head and sort of bouncing on my hands at times, so that's something we need to work on ... I think transitions will be our next goal. Up to trot and into walk .... He bounces into the trot, and kind of ploughes into the walk ... But hey - this is an ex harness horse who's technically on his 12th/13th ride! I think he's doing extremely well.... I'm not intending to work on canter under saddle yet - until we've got walk and trot covered.

However - might want to get that going soon, as there's another show coming up with Standardbred classes that I'd like to take him to. I'll try and make this one! hehe.

*No pictures of Red - as my stoopid phone camera died when I was taking pics of Huey. (Was most ticked off about that)...