Prince: Point to Point

Sept 9 2010

This morning I didn't ride Prince but we played on the ground and did some pretty fun stuff. One new thing that we did was we did Point to point from barrel to barrel using the same pattern as the Bowtie pattern. My plan was just to do it at the walk and trot at first and then build to the canter but on the first try Prince offered the canter so then we did it at the canter. Prince caught on really quickly. We ended when he had the general idea of what I wanted him to do. He wasn't stopping right at the barrel, sometime he would go past it a little bit, but I was happy with the fact that he was cantering, getting the correct leads, and had the general idea of what he was supposed to do. So then we moved on to the next thing...

We did Figure eights, zone 5 driving with one rein doing walk/trot/canter transitions. This was the first time that we have done cantering transitions with me in zone 5. We have done some cantering on the circle with two reins but not like this. Prince did so well and we got some really cool walk to canter, canter to halt, etc transitions. 

We also played with Sideways and also seeing how much I could ask Prince to do (and he understood and did it) with just my core energy. Prince was fabulous! There was a couple times that I have to reinforce what I was asking but 95% of the time he did exactly what I wanted, at the gait I wanted. Whether it was jumping a single barrel from a stand still, going sideways to the end of the 22ft line, backing up with energy and effort, pushing the ball, everything!! Prince was really amazing! 

I am really excited about using Point to point and the Bowtie pattern to cause Prince to want to canter more while I am riding and also to get our Simple lead changes. Plus it is something new that we can do in our riding ring and with our limited space. 

Naturally,

~Keri