Ruffian: Jumping, smelling the tail, and change of directions.

This morning I played with Ruffian. It had so much energy! It was a lot of fun to play with. To let Ruffy move his feet we did some traveling circles at the canter and a little bit of gallop in there. Ruffy had a lot of fun! You can just tell that he loves to run and play! We also did some transitions and change of directions. Both are getting a lot better and were a lot of fun! We did canter to halt transitions, walk to canter, trot to halt and lots more! Our change of directions are getting very smooth!

After that we did some sideways and other things. Then when I felt that Ruffian was in a good learning frame of mind I decided to teach him to smell his tail. So first I had to just play friendly game with his tail because he thought that as soon as somebody picked up his tail it meant back up. So after that I asked him to bend his head (lateral flexion style) while I was standing farther back and then once all that was going well I put it all together and it was so cool! The first try Ruffian wasn't quite sure what to do so he started moving around a little bit but not long after he stopped and his nose and tail touched then I immediately released. He licked and chewed almost right after that. I wanted to try it one more time just to see if he understood and he didn't move his feet one inch! He bend beautifully and sniffed his tail for about 5-10 seconds! It was amazing how fast he caught onto that!

There were two barrels in the middle of the arena so I asked Ruffian to circle at a closer range and jump them each time he got to them. He did it perfectly! He did about four 15ft circles at the trot or canter and really put a lot of effort into jumping them! So after that we went over and I sat on the fence and we spent some undemanding time together. Then when I took the halter off Ruffian stayed with me the whole time. He is such a cool horse!I have been having so much fun playing with him :)

Naturally,
~Keri