Prince: Patterns!

March 31 2010

 When I went out to play with Prince he was lying down again so after I took my saddle and every thing up to the riding ring I went and sat with him for a while then I decided to try actually sitting on him (with one leg on either side) and guess what!?! He let me! It was soooooo  cool! I couldn't believe it! Prince didn't even pin his ears! I sat there for a couple minutes then got off and then got back on again. Prince was perfectly fine with it. I still can't believe that Prince let me do that! I mean this has been something that I have seen my sister do with Ruffy lots of times and only dreamed about and now my dream has come true! It was so special! After a while Prince got up and stayed with me so I haltered him and we went up to the riding ring. On our way up I asked Prince to back up a little ledge, through the path, and then down the little hill, through the mud and onto the path up to the riding ring. Prince did really well but he wasn't to sure about backing through the mud but he tried really hard and did it! He is so brave :)

Once we were in the riding ring I brushed Prince and then saddled up. Then we went and did some Figure eights. At first Prince was not connected with me at all but after some playing around we finally got it and Prince was way more connected to me. Then we did some circles. I asked Prince to trot 4 laps to the right do a change of direction and the trot 4 laps in the other direction. I wanted to observe Prince and see when he got his adrenaline up and some other things. Prince kept the belly of the rope on the ground the whole time and was really relaxed so that was good. Then I asked Prince to canter. He went up into the canter no problem but then after I asked him to trot again he was on the adrenaline of cantering and I so I let Prince trot around until he relaxed and then I asked for another change of direction. I realised that I have to be really careful about when I ask for the change of direction, Prince has to have rhythm, relaxation and connection and then I can ask for it if I ask to soon he will not do the change and just run off. We did some really nice transitions and some more change of directions and then I brought Prince in. He did so well! 

After that I got on and rode. We had the most wonderful ride! We started off with a little bit of follow the rail at the trot. We trotted one lap around the arena and then stopped. Then we did some Weave. Prince did really well with that! We did a couple Weaves at the trot. There wasn't quite enough room for Prince to trot around the one end so we walked around that one and trotted the rest! It was so much fun! After a rest we did some sideways. I asked Prince to put more effort into going sideways. He did really well and we got about 10ft of very nice sideways and Prince put some extra speed into it! Hooray! We also did a little bit of savvy string riding. Prince is so light! We just did some sideways, forequarter yields, and point to point but Prince did really well!

Then the last thing we did was Figure eights! Again Prince did really well and we trotted two complete figure eights with out breaking gait! Yippee! Plus there was the challenge of trotting down a slight hill that was part of the figure eight.... which is something I am not 100% comfortable with. But I stayed focused on the barrel and everything was perfect! One really cool thing was that at the end we did one figure eight at the walk and Prince did it with me hardly using my reins! It was so cool! He did a really sharp turn around the barrels and it was incredible!! We ended there because I ended to help my mom and Knightly with their Weave. So Prince had a nice long rest while I did that. 

It was so much fun riding again! I can hardly wait to do it again! 

Naturally,

~Keri

P.S. Two more things! While Prince and I were doing Stick to me, w/t/c, Prince did some sort of a lead change! I saw it out of the corner of my eye and my mom saw it! I am not sure if it was a flying lead change of if Prince just changed in his front end but either way it was cool!

And the second thing was that I asked Prince to jump the two barrels that were standing up on their end. He did but he still knocked the one over. We shall have to play around with that and see if they are just to tall or if he needs to have a longer running jump at them ;)