On Monday night I borrowed the Pony Grandma to watch/assist me again so that I could ride Cisco. I lunged him first (I'm getting smarter!), but he seemed to be in a quieter frame of mind right off the bat. So after getting on and being on the lead for only about a minute I was brave enough to be let loose.
And he was great! Our brakes were working again. And the groundwork I have been doing with the dressage whip has paid off - when he would stop, a couple of taps with the whip would get him going again. And the steering was so much better! I mean, we still didn't make it right into the corners. And I really have to remember that hanging on the rein really doesn't work very well. For about 15 minutes he walked nicely forward and seemed to be fairly relaxed.
Because it was going so well, I decided I would try our first trot on our own. I really was just hoping to have a couple of decent transitions. He picked up the trot not too badly from my voice, and maybe my leg (wishful thinking!). The whip was not required. But he was much more nervous than he had been on the lunge. Maybe because of the whip. So I did a couple of very short trots and decided I better end it while things were going well.
When I brought Phantom in, he wandered over to the round bale and didn't just stand at the gate and wait for her. He's figuring life out.
No comments:
Post a Comment