Today there was a small chance of storms in the afternoon, so we went to the barn in the morning. This decision back-fired a bit though. We’d just gotten out to the pasture and mounted when it started to rain.
The sun was out, and the sky was by no means dark, so we decided to just wait it out. We let the horses stand with their butts to the wind, and got rather wet.
The shower only lasted a few minutes, and afterwards we were all a bit wet and sticky, but tried to get our ride underway in spite of this. Steen was actually pretty great today. He was much less opinionated about where he did or did not want to go. Brian mentioned a tip he read recently in a Julie Goodnight article. She suggests exhaling before asking for a downward transition to prepare the horse for the idea that a slow-down is coming. I tried that with Steen today, and it worked really well. He was much faster than usual to transition out of the jog into a walk. He also barely jumped into the trot unasked at all. When I could feel him thinking about it, I practiced exhaling and this seemed to talk him out of it a few times.
Like yesterday, his trot was beautiful today. He was really relaxed, moving nicely on a loose rein and paying a lot of attention to me.
I also think I can safely say Steen has mastered the art of standing. It’s sort of his new favorite thing.
Horseback hours YTD: 32:55