Prince: Weaving, riding with two carrot sticks and lots more!

March 15 2010

Prince and I had the most amazing play time and ride!  It was incredible! Almost all the snow in the riding ring is gone and so I decided to saddle Prince up and ride. Prince and I had a lot of fun playing Online. Since we now have our obstacles back it was even more fun! I asked Prince to come to me over the pedestal, one foot at a time. He did really good when he was coming off of the pedestal. We are still working on him keeping his last back foot on the pedestal but we it is going really well! My mom had set up two poles about 3ft apart in front of two of the four tires that made  a box (if that made any sense at all I am not sure, but basically the two poles made a alley way into the little box) I wanted to play with getting our yo-yo's straighter and faster so I asked Prince to back in between the poles into the box and then he got a rest. We did this a couple times on the 12ft line, Prince did really well. he quickly caught on and started putting more effort into backing up. Prince will back up straight until he is about 20ft away from me so I decided to switch to the 22ft line and see what it was like. Prince put so much effort into getting back into the box it was incredible! He backed all the way to the end of the 22ft line, he was straight and he went really fast! It was really neat! Plus the second part of our Yo-yo got better! The bring back! Prince was ultra straight! 

Then we did the Weave pattern at a trot. At first Prince and I were both very uncoordinated! But we soon got is all figured out and Prince even offered to canter! It was fun! After that we did some traveling circles, there were a couple slippery spots so we tried to avoid those. We didn't do a whole lot of circles because we had done the Weave. But I did ask Prince to canter just to make sure he wasn't going to buck. Then I lined the barrels up along the fence and I sent Prince over to them. The first time I asked him to jump it and the second time I asked him to straddle it. All I had to do was relax and Prince straddled them! It was so cool! The belly of the rope was on the ground the whole time! It was incredible! I asked Prince to come sideways towards me off the barrels. Prince's hindquarters were lagging a little bit so we played with that until Prince gave me a couple really steps of sideways. 

After that I got on and rode. Since the snow is mostly gone in the riding ring I want to start riding other patterns. So I picked the Weave. We did a couple at the walk before I asked Prince to trot. It took us a while before Prince would trot the whole Weave. At first he would trot around a couple tires then break gait. So I would reward the slightest try and then we would go again. After a while Prince trotted through the weave, walked around the ends (I asked for that because there was snow and ice around the end tires) and then he would trot down the other side. I was really proud of how well Prince did! 

After that I grabbed two carrot sticks and we rode around doing some transitions (walk to trot, trot to halt, etc) Prince did really well. We also did back-ups, sideways, indirect and direct rein and all that kind of stuff. It was a lot of fun! Prince did really well with the sideways. We went sideways at least 20ft! Oh and we also did Point to point. Prince climbed up on the pedestal twice with all four feet and I didn't need to touch my reins! It was really fun! 

I also taught Prince to do a lateral flexion with a carrot stick! It is something we had been playing around with for a while now but I never really took the time to do it. So today we did. Prince caught on very quickly. So we now can do it both ways! Hooray! The last thing we did was I asked Prince to climb up on the pedestal and put all four feet on it then I stood up on him! That is the first time I have done that with the pedestal being as tall as it really is (the last time I did it there was snow and so the pedestal wasn't as tall). 

After I got off I asked M1 & M2 if they wanted to ride Prince so they both had a turn. Prince did so well and was perfectly fine with then being up there. Then I asked my older brother if he wanted to ride Prince. This was the first time in four years that a man has ridden Prince! I wasn't exactly sure how Prince would do because before I bought him he was abused my men. But Prince was fine. He is such a special horse and I love him so much! I think both Prince and I had a really good ride! When I took the saddle off there were just a couple ruffled hairs (which some of that could have been from my brothers riding) so that was encouraging! 

Naturally,

~Keri