Prince: Getting effective.

June 10 , 2011

Prince and I had an great session. I saddled him up at Liberty and then we headed up to the riding ring. We started off with some Touch it on the 45ft line and then moved fairly quickly into circles at the canter. Prince was motivated to move so I wanted to play with that while he was offering it. What we played with mainly was getting quicker responses the moment I asked, not second afterward. Now of course Prince being a LBI has come a long way and is responding with way more effort than he has even given me but I want to raise the bar. 

So we played with this concept for a while. All it really took was a long phase one, quick two, three, four. Prince got it. At a phase one Prince gave me six laps each direction at the canter. First send and with effort!! 

We applied the same concept to our yo-yo's and got some very nice yo-yo's to the end of the 45ft line. Now you may be thinking "How does she know her horse is ready for that?" Well there was something in me that just knew it was time to raise the bar and ask for more, and hey, if you don't try how will you know? I tried and it worked, Prince and I were both ready. But I have tried many other things and they haven't worked so I have gone back to where we were and carried on from there. 

After we were finished that I mounted up. Prince and I did Follow the rail at the walk, trot and canter. Prince had a hard time picking up the correct leads so we cantered and cantered and cantered, with lots of partial disengagements and patience, and slowly but surely Prince got it and was able to canter a complete lap each way on the correct lead. The ends were the hardest because Prince couldn't canter a curve on the wrong lead so he would break gait and then we were start again. He tried and tried and got a long rest at the end that is for sure.

I wanted to ride the Bowtie pattern and we did a little of that but because Prince was having a hard with basic leads I decided to leave that for another day. 

Then we headed down the hill and out the corral gate where we rode circles! Before I played with Prince to hooked up the chain on the gate so that I could undo it while mounted so that Prince and I could continue to play with opening and closing gates. It isn't the best gate to open while mounted because it gets caught on the grass a little bit it is still lots of fun! 

We rode some circles at the trot first and then went into the canter. It took Prince a while to figure out what he was supposed to do and how it was supposed to do it but in the end we got a couple beautiful circles in each direction at the canter, and on the correct leads :) I wasn't being to particular about the shape of the circle because I want to reward the maintain gait first. Prince was really sweaty by the time we finished so I allowed him to graze in the shape for a little while (a very little while because he is supposed to be loosing weight) and then brushed him off and went and trimmed Twosox :) 

Naturally,

~Keri-Lynn