First Real Trot - Done!

On Wednesday I dragged the Pony Grandma out to the barn again with me to be my 911 caller should need arise. When we arrived at the barn there was a fair amount of activity as it was farrier day (not for my guys), and I was worried that Cisco might be a bit unsettled in the barn. But he stood and almost seemed to relax a bit for a change. He has yet to come in and just park and have a snooze - he is always on alert watching for me. This was one of his better days, but not at all a snoozing day.

I lunged him for a few minutes, then did a couple minutes of groundwork before getting on. He walked and steered quite nicely, then it was time to trot. We started to the right (my better side) and he was fantastic! We did two laps of the arena (well, the half of the very large arena that I was using) and he felt relaxed and balanced and almost steerable.  Then we went left.

He almost looks uphill here! Pretty sure it's a trick of the camera.

We got about half of a lap done and he decided my quarter was up. There was someone else waiting to come in to lunge a horse, and they were being super kind and waiting for me to finish before coming in, but he had seen the horse so was distracted.  He kept stalling out at the same point next to some standards, which was approaching the gate where he had seen the horse. And then he would cut in to the inside right past those standards.

But I managed to get one pass where he didn't actually come back to walk and didn't dive inside so much. So I called it quits there. (Also green horses that don't maintain their pace are exhausting!) Next time I will start to the left, and provided he only has the one day off, won't plan on lunging first in the hope that he will have a bit more time in him.

Since Pony Grandma was there, I put her to work videoing me. And since my video editing skills suck, here is the link to the full video.

As it usually goes, the video looks much better than it felt. The moments where he stalled out felt much longer and stickier than they appear in the video.

But then my critical side comes out - I'm kind of embarrassed to be caught on the wrong diagonal going to the right. Trying to keep him going, steering, and me breathing I guess were all I could concentrate on. More importantly though - WTF are my shoulders doing? Why is my right shoulder 4 inches higher than my left???? Stupid right shoulder! Get back and down!