Shirrine
19-08-2005, 12.04 pm
As some of you are aware I have been rehabilitating Roo after finding a broken wolf tooth in his bottom jaw.
Well at last we are starting to make progress although we do back pedal every now and then. The good thing about that is that I now have a tool so that we don't argue about it, I just put him back into the one rein small circles.
Today I barely did a one rein circle which is a first since I started working him like this. The walk is now a normal walk, nice and big, no hurrying and in a lovely soft outline.
The trot work today was straight lines, big improvement there, to walk on the short side and then walk the long side trot the short side. Very little hurrying involved at all. After that we did surpentines with walk loops to trot loops back to walk loops. Then surpentines from quarter line to quarter line. Then out of the surpentine to the long side to the surpentine all the time keeping the softness.
In fact we had softness for about 80% of the time which is a huge step from my little locked up everywhere horse of 3 months ago before I found the answer to unlocking him.
I still haven't cantered him with this work and won't until I can keep this softness all the time. I am cantering him on the lunge before I get on and that is also becoming softer and more balanced. We still aren't as forward as we should be but I want softness first. I will never have a problem with forwardness or being on the forhand with this one.
Shirrine
Well at last we are starting to make progress although we do back pedal every now and then. The good thing about that is that I now have a tool so that we don't argue about it, I just put him back into the one rein small circles.
Today I barely did a one rein circle which is a first since I started working him like this. The walk is now a normal walk, nice and big, no hurrying and in a lovely soft outline.
The trot work today was straight lines, big improvement there, to walk on the short side and then walk the long side trot the short side. Very little hurrying involved at all. After that we did surpentines with walk loops to trot loops back to walk loops. Then surpentines from quarter line to quarter line. Then out of the surpentine to the long side to the surpentine all the time keeping the softness.
In fact we had softness for about 80% of the time which is a huge step from my little locked up everywhere horse of 3 months ago before I found the answer to unlocking him.
I still haven't cantered him with this work and won't until I can keep this softness all the time. I am cantering him on the lunge before I get on and that is also becoming softer and more balanced. We still aren't as forward as we should be but I want softness first. I will never have a problem with forwardness or being on the forhand with this one.
Shirrine