What a Great Day!!!

Well Red and I had a great day yesterday!! He was such a good boy. I hadn’t worked with him in 2 days, so before I did anything, I let him run and kick and buck around his field for a little bit. Every horse loves a good turn out, he had a blast! He was snorting and had his tail up prancing around. He got tired pretty fast though and when I set the lunge whip down, he'd look at me all cute then drop his head and lick and come over to me for love. He's such a sweetheart.



So I tried something new with him and put his bridle and saddle on yesterday for lunging! He had no problems with the bridle, that was our first go at that, he took the bit right away and kept his head down low. He is well behaved and has pretty good manners! So I put his halter over the bridle and we lunged a while. He has the walk in both directions down. He is always a little closer to me when I am between him and the shed (aka ‘the food’) and he pulls a little when he's between me and the shed, so I'm working on keeping a nice even circle. I don't let him pull on the shed side, I keep him paying attention to me and I keep his head from moving out, and he has the whip pointed at his shoulder on the close side. By the end of the day it got a lot better.

We spent a lot of time working on the trot too yesterday in the counter clockwise direction. When he got to where the shed is in the circle, he stopped and faced me. So I just kept asking him to move forward and pick up the trot again, over and over, and eventually he started not stopping! It took a lot of work to keep him going, but I got about 5 good trot circles out of him at the end where I really had to push him through the one spot, but he did it and he did it well!



We then worked on the clockwise direction and that went well too. His balance isn't quite there but he's figuring it out. Again I had to really push him by the shed, but he went after a while and I got a few circles in a row that way too! And he did it all with the saddle and bridle and he didn't care about them at all, which makes me feel great about riding him soon.

I wanted to ride him for the first time last weekend, but the weather wasn’t cooperating. Getting on my OTTB that just turned 6 for the first time in 30 mph winds doesn’t sound like the smartest of ideas!

We worked again this evening and he was full of himself! He was even cantering on the lunge line. I don’t want him to get wild, I want him to learn to listen and be calm on the lunge. He tripped once and it was the funniest thing, he got embarrassed and he bucked and kicked out! My silly proud horse…