March 8 2010
This morning I played with Prince. I think I am going to really like this spring weather! It is so beautiful outside! I can't believe that winter is over. It seemed to do so fast! Hopefully summer won't drag on though. It always seems like winter goes fast but summer just drags on and fall never comes! But I am not going to worry about that right now. I have all of spring a head of me, a great winter behind, and two wonderful horses to enjoy it with!
So as I was going outside this morning I thought of something quite brilliant I think. As I have said before there are times when I ask Prince for a change of direction and sometimes he will just go faster and faster and not responds to the pressure. So I was thinking and the thought that came to me was this... maybe if I ask for the change of direction when Prince is at a certain place he feels the pressure and it feels like it is coming from in front of him and so he starts going faster because he knows to respond to that pressure. It was just a thought but I decided to play around with it once Prince and I were up in the riding ring.
I brushed and saddled Prince up totally at Liberty! We have only done that a couple times but Prince stood nice and still and everything went smoothly! We played at Liberty in the corral for a little while and guess what??? We did our very first close range circle game at Liberty! Yippee!! It was so cool! We did it both ways and changed direction a couple times too! After that we did some Touch it, stick to me and a couple other things then we went up to the riding ring. This time I was not going to mess up and start off to quickly! So we started with some Touch it. I sent Prince to the barrel and didn't really have an idea of what I wanted him to do but I wanted him to try something. At first he looked totally not interested. Like what could possibly be interesting about a barrel. But then he started getting interested and offered to put his foot on it. Then we went over to a tire. Prince put his front front foot in it so I took that and then asked him to put his back foot in it. At first he wasn't really trying but the he got really interested and it was a matter of seconds before he figured out the puzzle.
Then we did some circles but not a whole lot because it was slippery. I only asked Prince to canter a little bit. Just enough for me to know that he wasn't going to start bucking because he hasn't had the saddle on for a while. He was fine. We did some transitions first. Prince was really soft and responsive. So then we did some change of directions. I tried my new theory out and guess what!?! I think it worked! I wanted till Prince was just behind me but not to far and then asked for the change of direction and right away Prince turned and went the other way... and the really cool thing is that the belly of the rope didn't come off the ground! That is a huge thing for us! Our change of directions have never been that soft!
After that I got on. It was nice to be back riding in my saddle! The only thing I wanted to do while we were riding was play with our transitions. Since the snow is melting it was really slippery but Prince was really good and took his responsibility of watching where he was going well. I decided that the best thing would be to do it while following the rail. That way we could stay off the ice for the most part. So off we went. I started off my walking a lap or so just so that I could get a good idea of what the footing was like. Then I was able to work it so that we trotted on the not to slippery parts and then walked on the icy parts. So that worked well. The whole time I tried to keep a totally loose rein. Or as much as possible. That is one thing that I have a harder time with especially when we are trotting fast. So that was one thing, plus I played around with my fluidity. Since I haven't ridden in a saddle for a while I had to play with that. Not that it is a huge difference from riding bareback. But I didn't trot as long or far when we were bareback but with a saddle I can. I found that I was a little bit tight in my hips.
Prince did so well. One really cool thing was that after a while he started blowing, stretching a little bit and he lowered his head! That was really good! I don't think I have ever trotted so much in my life! We did A LOT of trotting. The really neat thing was that when I asked Prince to trot he would maintain gate until I asked him to slow down. There were a couple times that he broke gait but for 95% of the time I was asking him to walk, or trot etc. A couple times we trotted almost two full laps around the arena!
One time it got really winding and we were trotting right into the wind and my hat blow off! Fortunately it got caught on my ponytail so as we were trotting along I was reaching back trying to get my hat while trying to stay balanced. The good thing was that Prince is now really good at stopping when I relax. Now you may think that for a LBI that would be no problem but there was a time when Prince wouldn't want to stop that quickly. So all I had to do was relax and Prince stopped. It was funny though because as just as my hat was coming off I though "I sure hope it doesn't come off and hit Prince and spook him" But Prince stayed calm and relaxed the whole time. What a good boy!
When I took the saddle off I was right... I wasn't moving my hips and shoulders enough. There were sometimes that even at the walk I could tell that I was out of sync with Prince. So next time I will have to pay attention to that.
So all in all it was a very good play time and ride. I can't wait to do it again! The only bad thing was that my carrot stick broke :( The leather loop thingy broke. I was waiting for it to happen though because it was hanging on my just a little bit of leather. At least I can use it for carrot stick riding :)
Naturally,
~Keri
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