May 17, 2011
After I played with and rode Prince I had a little bit of time left so I played with Twosox. The blackflies were getting worse by the minute so we kept it short and... well short. We started with Figure eights. Twosox was not connected at first and was bracing a lot. So we played with that and eventually his bracing got less and less, but he was looking out on the one end of the Figure eight so I decided to give him a reason to look to me... food! I brought him in, gave him some sunflower seeds and then sent him back out again. This worked very well and after a few times of doing this we got two beautiful Figure eights at the trot and Twosox was willing and motivated!
Then I set the barrels up on end and asked Twosox to trot out onto the circle then I set it up so that Twosox could have a choice of whether to jump the barrels or not. He picked to jump them. He trotted up nicely, having a great rhythm and relaxed trot and jumped over the barrels to problem. I asked for a change of direction which we got and then we went the other way. The first time I allowed Twosox to come between myself and the barrels because we had done the change of direction a little to close to the barrels for him to comfortably, at this stage, jump the barrels. He could have done it but I wanted it to be relaxed and not rushed.
He trotted a full circle, came up to the barrels and jumped it no if, buts, or maybes :) Then I brought him in and gave him a rest. After a little while we walked over and I let Twosox lick honey off of the bit and also bridled him for a short amount of time. I didn't leave it in his mouth long because I was getting pretty bothered by the blackflies so I unhaltered Twosox and went down to the house.
Naturally,
~Keri
No comments:
Post a Comment