Lease Ride Jan. 20th 2026 Training Journal Entry #22

 For our ride today I really wanted to focus on keeping him from swapping out to his right lead coming down the line on our left lead... so we worked on that with the jumps set down to poles.

We warmed up on a loose rein, doing figure 8s and circles at the trot in our warm up. He had such a nice stretchy trot. When we cantered, we worked on our walk to canters (they still need lots of work) and focused on staying under himself on the rail, we have practiced it so much on a circle i thought we should try it on the rail and he actually did pretty good with it.

My plan was to do the poles on a circle so that he would have to hold his lead to stay balanced, so i trotted them first before attempting canter.

When we tried cantering it he launched me and swapped out... I went down to the barn to ask Chloe for some ideas of what to try. I had a couple more attempts that didn't get recorded of trying different tactics to keep our lead but they didn't work, so I knew I need some help from Chloe.

Chloe told me to trot in canter out because it would help him balance more, she said that she thinks he's swapping out because of the lack of balance. The first time we tried he picked up the wrong lead, but the second time we got our lead and held it over the second pole. It's definitely going to take time to build up the balance and strength he needs so today was just the start of it.

Lots of rubs and scratches!!