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| With this derpy, derpy animal |
On Friday night, I made my goal for the ride "adjustability." I wanted two different trots, two different canters. I tend to spend too much time in one trot and one canter, and I really need him to be paying attention to me within the gaits. He felt freaking phenomenal, so good that I quit at a half hour.
He'd had two pretty intense Dressage rides in a row, so I wanted to change things up a bit with a cavaletti exercise on Saturday.
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| (PS, is there still a caveletti bloggers club and if so can I join? I need ideas!) |
I don't really have cavaletti but I have jump standards with holes all the way to the bottom, so that works! The idea of this one was that we'd do it as a figure 8 at the trot. I liked it, because it would require both of us to pay attention to both the bend and the inside hind, and it would come up quickly for us.
We struggled with the exercise on the left turn especially. Right was no problem. I did it at a collected trot, and was somewhat surprised that he actually did trot it every time, rather than trying to jump it.
By the time I quit with the cavaletti exercise he was feeling so good and we were only about 25 minutes into the ride, so I decided to play with canter-walk transitions. They're still super rough, but we averaged around 2 trot steps which is way better than the 4-5 at the beginning of the summer.
Then we hacked out around the field:
The grass is so tall in spots, up to his eyeballs, I couldn't blame him for grabbing a to go box. If he was a sale horse I wouldn't let him grab grass like this, but he's not.
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| No filter, the grass really is still this green. It's been a great year for grass and hopefully hay too. |
Of course, he couldn't exactly chew it with the bit in, so:
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| "Bleh" - Connor, probably |
I also got my tack locker cleaned and organized, my tack cleaned, and my trailer re-organized. All in all, a pretty fantastic Saturday!
1) Cavaletti blog cluB YES PLEASE.
ReplyDelete2) Tristan is also totally incapable of eating grass through the bit. I usually let him take a bite at the beginning of a hack and it occupies his mouth and brain for the rest of the ride.
Hey, uh, that tall grass looks like johnsongrass to me. A little of it isn’t a huge issue, but it can be problematic they eat a lot of it. http://equine.ca.uky.edu/news-story/toxin-topic-johnsongrass-poisoning-horses
ReplyDeleteThanks for the heads up! It's actually in our jump field and no horses graze on it (and obviously Connor didn't ingest any since he spit the whole thing out, haha). Still good to know though! I remember learning about it in college but forgot what it looked like.
DeleteThat sounds like an amazing ride! We had a no-Cavaletti in the arena rule at my last barn so I’m hoping to do more with them now that I’ve moved! Now I just need Katai to come out of quarantine!!
ReplyDeleteHow awesome, I'm so happy for your move(s)! You're going to have so much fun. Cavaletti is really helpful.
DeleteHe is so stinking cute. No words! Some of my recent jump lessons might give you some cavaletti ideas. Like a circle of death where you turn in the opposite direction of the circle after each pole. It'll blow his mind and get him listening to you.
ReplyDeleteWait, like to the outside or to the inside?
DeleteSo Let's say you are doing a circle of death counter clockwise. You would do pole one, then circle RIGHT, go over pole 2, circle RIGHT etc etc. Here is my post on it (with terrible drawings): https://mayaswellevent.wordpress.com/2018/07/31/a-footloose-jumping-lesson/
DeleteAlso check this out: https://eventingconnect.today/2018/08/21/a-cavaletti-exercise-with-a-fun-twist-video-break
Our cavalletti group died a bit but we can reinvigorate it, I'll add you to the spreadsheet!
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