Cloudy Day, Long Ride

Last week I redesigned this blog again. I liked the old design for a long time and then it slowly started to annoy me, so we’ve got a totally fresh approach now.

We didn’t ride Thursday or Friday, so we were keen to get out there today. My goal for the ride was to continue to work a lot on transitions between the walk and the lope, and fight the prance wherever it appeared. It was an overcast day, and we brought along the SLR since we haven’t had any good photos for a while. Unfortunately, light conditions were tricky and the results were a bit hit or miss.

Steen was quiet starting out. Sometimes it still shocks me how much he has changed. New people meeting him actually think he’s a mellow horse. He never used to stand with his poll below his withers. These days he’s not even thinking about moving his feet while I mount.

I worked on a lot of little stuff in between asking him to lope and asking him to walk. We got some more side-passing in, but in the weird way of horses, nothing as good as that first try a few days ago. I put a lot of effort into making the walk engaging. I was asking for collection on and off, varying the pace I asked him to go, making an effort to keep his bending consistent and keep his forequarters and hindquarters moving at the same rate. His loping was great overall. He got pretty fast a few times, but he was always with me. He was better at chilling out after loping, too. I only had to use the one-rein stop a few times.

Bear has been frisky about loping lately, too, so Brian worked that gait fairly early in the ride and kinda hard. Bear is so funny. He’ll be 17 later this year but some days he just acts like a four year old.

After the ride we worked on helping them shed for quite a while. We also got them a salt lick we intend to offer them after rides. They both got some serious licking in today.

Ride: 1:20
Horseback hours YTD: 21:25