Riding Diary: 43

Time: 1 hr

Ride: Monday I was tired, I honestly almost fell asleep on the way to the barn - that's an issue. haha. I was in one of those moods where I was praying to the horse god's of above that Jingle wouldn't be in one of his "MAHM, I HATE YOU SO MUCH RIGHT NOW" moods.

Jingle was good at the warmup - maybe my horse is a hunter under saddle horse? Just sayin'. Anyways, from there we trotted the barrel pattern, as we went in to the first barrel Jingle balked at something.. apparently he was as tired as I was and didn't see the barrel we were turning ? who knows... and up into the air he went. I was pretty surprised, enough that I lost a stirrup haha. From there I just asked him to be polite in a small circle and we attempted again - he was fine, what a weirdo. My trainer had originally had me really taking my barrel hand up and over the barrel through the turns, however, I've noticed this often results in Jingle deeking his head more down and around than actually following his nose through a turn, and keeping that turn through the hind-end. So, instead, I kept my hands up by closer to his neck, and we had some really wicked turns. Good boy.

From there the bulk of our lesson was jogging and loping a set of three ground poles on a circle. Our jog was decent, I think all of our transition work is helping, Jingle doesn't automatically think "we're jogging a small circle so that must mean I get to lope right?!" however he still was a little frantic and pushy at the jog. At the lope he tried his old tricks - deak to the right, square off in the turns, run me into the wall - but I was there to block his advances. We're like a well oiled machine - him and I.

Once we had our jog and lope all sorted out, we worked on our stop. My trainer got me to "bait" Jingle, meaning if we were loping the circle, she would have me give him a little more rein and see if he wanted to speed up, if he was pushy and tried to zoom off, I would shut him down. This worked really well and after a couple times he was being a lot more consistent through the circle.

Finally, she had me asking for a stop on a curve, generally I stop Jingle on the rail, so it was a good exercise to just get him thinking about stopping, backing up, waiting, forward when I ask him, etc. It was funny though, "waiting" wasn't his strong suite, and so when I stopped him from a lope right infront of the ground poles, he would pitfully paw at the poles. When I asked him to stop he would sheepishly lower his head and then sneakily attempt to paw again. He is such a goof.

For Next Time: Transition work - lots of it!