Lots of Bulges

Since Cisco did so well on his first real ride outside last week, I decided on Sunday to test him and see if we could ride outside without riding him down inside first. When I hopped on him on Sunday, I did a bit of groundwork, hopped on, and headed straight out to the outdoor.

He was definitely more up than he was on the last ride outside. Not crazy up (so far he hasn't done crazy), just a little quicker than I want, and more distracted. His distracted is getting better - instead of immediately going splat or having to stop and stare he can continue to walk and stare.

There is lots of room for improvement in our steering. Once we picked up a trot he was quite bulgey, especially going away from the open entry to the arena. Putting my crop in the outside hand seems to help, and it got much better through the ride, not that I would trust him to not leave on a loose rein.

Yes - barn pig, there is a donut in that tack box. But it is well out of pig range!0

Going right is certainly his weaker side. The good news is that it's my stronger side. I had to repeat a bunch of circles to the right as he would just drop that shoulder and speed off when I asked him to turn, probably in part because the turn took him back to the gate. It took 4 or 5 circles each time to get him to soften a bit and not speed through the turn.

Most of the ride was spent working on just getting him to maintain a regular pace, with varying degrees of success. Mostly unsuccessful.

But for the first time, we had a couple of moments where the trot felt great. Longer, forward strides, just what I'm aiming for. I couldn't make it happen when I asked for it, but I will happily take the glimmer that he gave me.

He was desperate for a roll after his post-ride hose down.

It wasn't the best ride, but it wasn't a bad ride either. On the way back to the barn to dismount something behind him spooked him, but his reaction was a scoot forward of about 3 steps and back to walk. No real biggie.

It was a very long day for me so I didn't ride One-Shoe Phantom. I tried a new approach to get her to eat the spirulina - I put some applesauce in her rubber dish and sprinkled some spirulina and stevia on it. I wish I had taken video of her when she was presented the dish - she so did not trust what was in there. Thankfully she decided to try it and she slurped it up pretty quickly. It wasn't the full dose of spirulina - we will work our way up to that.