So happy 9th birthday to Ben! Someone needs to tell him he's not a baby anymore and he can't do silly baby things and get away with them...
Well I didn't get pictures or videos because I didn't do much with my gridwork session because Ben thought it would be a fabulous day to be all spooky and bucky and sidewaysey. We did do a little bit but not a terrible amount and nothing that I really thought was worth filming.
The grid I set up was placing pole, 9 feet to crossrail, 9 feet to placing pole, 9 feet to vertical, 10.5 feet to placing pole, 10.5 feet to oxer. So in other words it was crossrail, one stride, vertical, one stride, oxer, with placing poles in between the fences. Original, I know, but it ended up working well for him. I originally planned to warm him up over the grid with lowish jumps and then maybe hike them up to 3' - 3'3" but we ended up not doing that because I wanted to end on a good note and he was jumping through really well. So we had just the crossrail, the vertical was like 2'3" and the oxer was like 2'6". Nothing terribly special or exciting but like I said, it worked well for him and he was really rounding over the fences nicely. I would have appreciated if he hadn't decided to buck after every time we went through the grid but I guess you win some, you lose some...
On a less stellar note, we had a dressage lesson yesterday just as we do every Thursday afternoon. Trailered over to my trainer's place, tacked up in the indoor because it was pouring out, started to lunge. Now, he was actually pretty good for lunging considering there were three horses in the ring that is only 20 x 40 meters, one which he had never seen before, and it was pouring on the TIN roof so that was quite a distraction. So, while lunging was a little quick and disorganized, I was proud of him for keeping his head for the most part.
So we did a little in-hand work and hopped on. The walk work was pretty good, as was the trot work. He was a little quick and rushy and definitely not as good as he can be but he was okay and I was willing to take it. And then it was our turn to canter...
We were going to do our "serpentine exercise" where you make one 20 meter circle at one end, cut across, walk at X, change direction, canter a 20 meter circle in the new direction, walk at X, change direction, canter 20 meter circle in new direction, and so on. Well, Ben wanted nothing to do with the whole cantering thing because all his friends were standing on the whole other side of the ring and besides, this whole walk-canter-walk thing is hard! Well, I told him he had to do it anyway, and once his objections with bucking and spinning fits were not getting him anywhere, he just decided he was going to either stop or back up, and not go forward. At all. Well, needless to say he did not get his way and we actually had a few decent transitions but the whole not wanting to go forward thing lasted a good 10 minutes. Silly horse. He's lucky its his birthday today...
Today its rainy and yucky which means poor Ben is stuck inside on his birthday. I was also going to do some conditioning with him on the 'loop' as we call it. It's a little circular dirt path that goes around our grass field. It's about 1/8th of a mile long and it has two short but steep hills, so we condition on that. Ben enjoys getting to gallop around out there (sometimes a little too much...) and I haven't really galloped since our last event of the season in October so I was looking forward to it too. But I'm sure it's nice and muddy and it's not worth it to risk damaging his legs. Maybe the footing in the ring will be nice enough to do some walk/trot stuff for a bit.
Saturday we have another jumping lesson which will hopefully go better than the first one of this week did. I'll let you know about that. Only 15 days until out first show of the season! Can't wait!
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