Camina 13

Today was interesting with her. I got her saddled, knowing it would be a little different as her friend, Buddy, was in the arena being worked too. I thought this was a good idea since she needs to have those other kinds of stimulation while being worked herself. We started with flexing but she was paying more attention to Buddy than me so I had her work on circles and then had her do the falling leaf exercise, moved into leg yields away from me on the wall and then into disengaging and moving her shoulders over, etc. After about 20 minutes of this I put her on the long line and had her begin to circle me. I wanted her to get into a steady rythmic trot with her head carried down and to the inside. However, it was at about this time Buddy left the arena and things fell apart from their for a while. She didn't like that Buddy left and when I asked her to keep at the trot on the circle she decided to pitch a fit and start bucking, to which, I kept her moving faster until she settled down. I debated about whether to disengage her and stop the bucking but I thought it would be better to make her go faster and show her that bucking is going to get her anywhere. She settled into a nice canter but it was too fast and not relaxed at all, but I made her keep it up for about 5 minutes, then asked her to trot and see if that would settle her down some more. However, one of the horses whinnied and she started her bucking fit again, but this time it was only a couple of times and she went to cantering again. So I just kept her at it. Then I let her slow to a trot. I was looking for her to relax and her cadence to be consistent so we did this for a good while. When she finally settled down I slowed her to a stop and let her rest for a second then sent her in the other direction doing the same thing. She went into a canter but it was not relaxed at all so I kept that up til she settled down then asked her to trot and do the same thing. She finally lowered her head and started carrying it more to the inside which makes her more balanced because it makes her lift the inside shoulder and she will stay on the circle more. When she did this, and she was in a good sweat, I changed things by putting the bridle on her and long reins and ground drove around for about 10 minutes. She did really well at this changing in directions with slight feel on the rein and even had her stopping consistently and leg yielding to the left. She had a hard time going to the right on a leg yield but we did get one or two steps periodically. At the end I stood in place and had her leg yield in a half circle to the left and then quit. I didn't ride her today as she was in a different frame of mind, so the sense of self preservation ruled over stupidity and we called it a day. But we still had a very good workout that began calm and ended calm with some rough spots in between.