Ruffian: The LBE is back!

July 12 2010

I do believe that playing with Ruffian more and progressing is paying off! Ruffian's LBE self has come back! I am loving it! He is totally different the Prince and Twosox but at the same time he is a lot like the others.

Today I saddled him up because it wasn't to warm out so the bugs weren't to bad. We did Falling Leaf, Touch it, Sideways, circles and Figure eights. The Figure eights were more challenging but still really good. It took a while to get them to the point where I wanted to leave them for today because Ruffian just wanted to run and play, which was fine with me, except I wanted to do it on the Figure eight. So it took some time but it was fun. I had lots of chances to play with how I can stay in neutral and let Ruffian have his responsibility. 

After that I mounted up. The first time Ruffian got a little worried so I got off and remounted. He was a lot more confident the next time. Then we just did lots of lateral flexions and indirect rein. Ruffian got really light and soft on our lateral flexions! It was really cool! Then we went and did some follow the rail. But first Ruffian had to roll. I got off just as he went down, and again thanks to Ruffian my saddle got yet another dirt bath... :)  Once he got back up again though we were able to do one full circuit of Follow the rail and even got right through the sandy part of the riding ring and Ruffian didn't try rolling again. I think that next time I ride Ruffy and he wants to roll I will get off before he actually goes down and see if I can interrupt the pattern.

We finished on a really good note though and when I let him go he didn't want to leave. So I groomed him to help him cool off a bit. Then Ruffian tool a nap for a while and then I brought out the ball and we played with that. Ruffian still didn't want to leave so we just hung out for a bit and then we went down to the corral. 

Naturally,

~Keri