Memory

You have heard of memory mattresses. You know those really thick foam ones that form to your body and then when you get up they spring back to their original form. That way they never get sags in them where you don't want them. Well, horses have memory too. Sometimes they are bad, hopefully most of  the time they are good. She had a good memory. She has a lot of pep and like an athlete I need to get her in shape before I start riding her again so I spent  the time refreshing her memory as to who I am (her leader) and what exercises she needs to do. She was quite the jumpy one, probably because of the wind against the walls and doors of the arena. I really worked her though. I warmed her up with some circling then went through our repetoire of exercises to see how she would do. She wanted to trot alot and bucked several times, but I just sped her up or changed directions. Eventually she calmed down and started to be responsive to what I was asking of her. Then we started into leg yields down the wall and around the arena; the falling leaf, crossing back and forth in front of me as I walked forward. We did some flexing and let her stop and work on desensitizing with the whip popping and so on. Because she was so jumpy, the next lesson we are really going to work on introducing all kinds of scary objects to her. My plan is to take her to another level than we reached last year. I am going to refine her movements and attaching the rein to the leg, you understand with an invisible string so that when I pick up a rein it moves a particular leg and so on. I hope also to get her to move into a canter freely, though even on a lunge line she didn't like to keep caner for more than a few steps. I quit her on this when I got her to canter both directions all the way around the circle. I get to work her 5 days a week this time around so hopefully we will see much faxster and better progress.
How's your memory of late. Exercise your brain and that will help. I may be exercising the horses body, but the exercises and transitions are exercising her brain, which makes for better control and harmony between us.
Have a great day. I will keep you posted.
Do something with your mind today.