Walk, Trot, Canter!

I have ridden Red twice since my last post and there isn't much new to report on (no news is good news, right?). He is still the calm smart OTTB he has been over the past several weeks and I couldn't be happier with him.

Before I rode yesterday we again, as always, lunged before. He walks, trots, and canters on the lunge like an angel going to the left. To the right he walks and trots fine, but we are working on the canter. When he doesn't know what to do or how to do it, he just stops and looks at me as he's done before. It's kinda funny when he does it, you can see it's purely for his clarification. He's not doing it to be bad, he is really looking at me and trying to make sense of what I'm asking him to do. So a few more tries to the right and I imagine he'll have it figured out in no time.

Yesterday I rode without having my husband home for the first time. *GASP* I did tell my neighbor to keep an eye on me and she did, but this guy has no bad intentions so I am not worried. Now I know he's just 6 so I am always aware and prepared, but I don't worry. Heck, I may even ride without my eventing vest in the near future!

I know Red can walk, trot, AND canter, but I was waiting to take that last step until I was comfortable and he was too, and yesterday was that day. There is a crappy video summarizing the ride below, but I only tried the canter to the left for our first try. He did great. I try to be prepared in case he takes off or bucks, but as always, there were no problems. It took a lot of work to get him going to pick up the gait but after asking a few times, he did it very smooth and without any shenanigans.

He was making ok circles at the walk and trot and we lost them at the canter. He'll learn how to balance better and turn in the future, it will come with practice and training. But for now our canter circles were pretty sad but that's ok, it was our first try.

I'm sure we'll have our second try soon...