day 63

Had a good day with the horses today. I got Robbie out and rd penned him for a few minutes. Then put halter on and went through the exercises around the arena. Saddling was great cause he wanted to stand. I moved him around a few more times then I got on him and flexed him. Today the goal was to move him on a loose rein and only pick it up if I needed it. It worked. I had him walking around and letting him basically choose the direction and then after a while I started picking up lightly on the rein and move in another direction. When he was doing this well, I started to ask for a trot. That was great. We were trotting on a loose rein and doing YH one rein stops real light. I kept that up doing figure eights and circles at a walk, then a trot then back to a walk. I finished the ride with walking and starting to put more directions with rein. Star I got in the pen and decided to rd pen him and see if I could get some better follow from him. It worked a little bit. If had the time I would have done it longer to see if it could improve more. I saddled him and moved him around doing all the exercises then I got on him. Flexed him and asked him to move off. He did so readily. I too wanted to ride on a loose rein and just get him to move good. I also finally got him to trot out for me going to the right, but could hardly get it going to the left. I worked on that more until I got a good circle at a trot going to the left. He offered a canter at one point, but soon backed down. He has carried himself so out of balance that with me on his back it is just hard for him to carry it up to a trot with his head high and hollowed out in the back. But it is too soon to try to collection and roundness when he won't even move forward real good. The reason is that trying to get collection will make him think I want to stop at this point. My goal for both of these guys is to get a walk, trot, canter and back down with as much softness as possible while in the round pen. Anything else is icing on the cake.