Just haven’t felt much like blogging lately, but of course I’m still riding.  The weekend was great.  With the river down and mild weather, we got all the horses in the park for the first time in over a month.  We kept them quiet, though.  Cole got a very valuable reminder that he is supposed to walk when I want him to walk.  He tried to trot whenever we got to a spot where we usually trot or canter.  I call them “trigger points.”  When he would walk, I would click and treat to reinforce the walk.  Once we turned around to go home, he was quite relaxed as we don’t have any trigger points in that direction.  On the second ride on Sunday, he was near perfect.  He learned his lesson from Saturday.

 

Cruiser was a problem.  I think he would have been fine, except my boyfriend left 10 minutes before on his horse.  Cruiser decided he was going to find him.  Once we crossed the river, he broke into his gait.  He does a very nice stepping pace which can get as fast as a slow trot. He must have gotten it from his mother, as some Morgans are gaited.  I thought I would trot a little to get him to settle down, but he wanted to go really fast—which is not something we do anymore because of his bowed tendon.  So I had to stop him, and he decided he would prefer not to.  I had to spin him to get control.  Then, I made him turn back and head away from the direction of my boyfriend’s horse.  He pouted, but he did settle down and realize he was tired.

 

We tried it again, and he did a moderately fast gait until we found by boyfriend.  They were waiting for us right where we planned to turn around, so we were able to walk back with them.  Of course, he was fine on the way home.

 

On Sunday, I opted to not cross the river with Cruiser as the bank was frozen and chopped up.  We just did the hill at a walk 3 times.  He was quite quiet.  I think he may have worn himself out the day before.  He doesn’t gait in the arena.

 

He was back to normal on Monday evening in the arena.  Once he got warmed up, he trotted marvelously—even in the direction he usually goes very slowly.  Cole had a decent arena ride, too, but he got a little balky towards the end.  I’m not sure what that was about, but we worked it out in the end.  I then led him outside to get some fresh air as a reward.  It sure was a pretty moonlit night.

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