Thursday, September 2, 2010

Camina 17

Another good session with her today. I got her saddled as usual and then started to work her on circles. She is getting to the place where she carries her head to the inside, puts her ear on me, lowers her head and moves in a steady trot alot quicker now. I read in Dietz's book on horsemanship about using the bit on the lunge to help the horse with head carriage, so today I tried it and connected the line directly to the bit. She responded real well to that and is carrying the bit much better. I lunged for 5 minutes in each direction working on those items mentioned above then I ground drove her for a few minutes, did some leg yields, turns on the forehand using the wall to help and even did some disengagements. I wanted to spend more time riding today so we did ground work for 30 minutes and then I got in the saddle and walked her around the arena. She is moving out alot better. We did some large circles and some disengagements and one rein stops. She seemed real comfortable with that so I took her up to a trot and worked on that for the rest of our time. I would ask her to trot and get four or five strides then back to a walk or disengagement and one rein stop. Then off we went again. I did this in both directions several times. She still seems to be having trouble carrying me. It is as if she doesn't know what to do with her feet sometimes, primarily during a transition like change of direction or disengagement. But no matter, she is coming along nicely. The thing I like about her is that she is relaxed through it all. Now that can be deceiving because I have seen her explode into a buck, she did that today when my alarm went off while I was lunging her. I think it was more that it startled her than attitude. So I know she can buck I just don't want her to while I am riding her. Working with her has been good.

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