Riding Diary: 42

Time: 1 hr

Ride: Why is it Monday was only a couple days ago, and yet seems years away? My brain is mush. Anyways, my lesson was... welll... 50/50. Jingle was good at the warm-up, and then my trainer asked me to just post trot a medium circle, with a cavaletti in the middle of it. Okay, easy... nope. Jingle was back to his old trick of swinging in his hip and attempting to run out of the circle. My trainer reminded me to open up my inside hand to the circle and really guide him over the cavaletti, releasing tension on my outside rein. I have a habit of holding too much tension on my outside to attempt to keep him "in" the circle when I just need to work on guiding him through it, and using more leg.

Okay - let's try this again. Again, he stopped, swung his hip out and danced around. So, I got after him, and over the silly little thing he went. After a couple rounds of this he was going over it calmly with a loose rein. Sigh, it felt like it was going to be a pissy day, and indeed it was.

Jingle was beautiful the first time we loped, and I literally got the best stop out of him i've ever had before. He parked it so hard in the dirt that we bounced a couple steps. It was wicked.

The Jog was alright, a bit rushed, but he was transitioning into it really nicely and smoothly. I love his transition from walk to jog, its so effortless, and I still dont really understand why he cant maintain that same level of impulsion - it's perfect.

Then, he started stalling again on me, and started to square off his corners/attempt to run into the wall business he does to fake me out. This is a) dangerous, b) something he should not be doing - he knows better, I wasn't asking for flying changes down the centre line for heavens sake, I was asking for a jog on a small circle, and then a lope - for him, this is a cake walk. So, I picked up a crop (god, I hate riding with crops), and he got a bit of a swat everytime he attempted this "let me dance into the wall, and then stop completely" business. The good thing about Jingle ft. Crop is that I barely have to brush him with it for him to straighten out, and get back to business. A couple little smacks later and he was jogging that circle like a boss. We loped a bit more, and quit for the day.

My trainer was pretty amused for the whole ride, she commented that I own a very weird horse. Sometimes, he's an angel - so well put together, so completely amazing, other times - he's a total wack job (but he's phasing out of that), and then there's lessons like Monday where he is absolutely amazing one minute, and absolutely falls apart the next. Sometimes, owning horses with a personality, and a pissy streak, isn't easy.

For Next Time: More transition work, I want to figure out how to keep that beautiful walk-jog transition going into a slow, put-together jog.