Lesson Dec. 29th + Lease ride Dec. 30th Training Journal Entry #16 + #17

 Lesson ~

Monday was quite cold and windy, so all the horses were a bit spooky and distracted when we were warming up, Sindri spooked when we walked past the judges stand because the sign was flapping he very much thought it was going to eat him and then halfway into his spook he realized it was just a sign and walked on like nothing happened.

He had a very nice trot, we did lots of circles and changes of direction. We worked over a trot pole exercise in the middle of the arena changing direction everytime we came through, he went through it really nicely the first few times, and then he started to get a bit bored, so we got his focus back and went through one more time so he would end on something good. 

After we each did the trot poles we took turns going over the jumps at the top of the ring, it wasn't quite a half ring circle, it was definitely smaller then what were used to doing. We started with the first jump set down as a pole with a small cross rail set for the second jump, we just trotted through and he did the pole great but tripped over the x-rail and knocked it down. We did it again but set the cross rail up a hole of two so he would care about it a little more, we wanted to canter out of it but he still didn't care that much (he kept the jump up this time) and he didn't canter out so we picked up our canter and cantered through the line, the circle was a little bit hard for us because it was so small, so the first time we cantered through our approach wasn't the best, but I was prepared for the second time we came through.

We did the same type of thing to the left, but at the bottom of the ring with both jumps set to xrails, we trotted through the first time, keeping our trot coming out of the jumps, and the next time we trotted in and then cantered out of the line, he was very good at placing his feet in the right spot and getting the bounce, even through some of the other horses struggled with it. We did that a couple of times and then cooled out in the ring before going back to the barn.

Lease ride ~

Tuesday was a bit windy again but not as cold as in our lesson.

We warmed up walk, trot, canter, and he gave me such nice gaits for all of it. His trot was super settled and was perfect pace, his canter was smooth and round, he didn't try to go above the speed i asked him for he just stayed consistent and waited for me to ask him to do something. I also got the nicest trot after we had warmed up at the canter.

After we warmed up, we started a pole exercise we had set up, 3 poles with about 4 and 6 strides in between each one, we had also put jump stands on the middle pole. We cantered up it first, and he actually didn't rush to the second pole like I had expected him to because of the jump stands.

We cantered down the line next, he did it even better than the going up the line, so we walked the track and ended on that.