Horse Thoughts

Catching Up

I’ve fallen a bit behind on my blog. Fortunately I have been getting plenty of riding in, I just haven’t done a good job posting about my rides. To sum up: Last week I continued to work quite a lot on loping. We went through a couple of days where the loping work had the undesirable effect… Read more »

Out and About

Things have been going very well in terms of getting Bear to come to me in the pasture.  We aren’t quite to the stage where he will see me and then just come up to me.  But the last few days have been great, usually taking less than a minute and only involving one or… Read more »

Slow and Steady

I don’t mean that we didn’t go fast at all, but rather I focused on keeping things more systematic.  So that if anything did start to not go so well, I could easily slow down and work out the problems.  After thinking more about my last ride, reading some things, and talking to Robin (it… Read more »

Lotsa Lope

We had another beautiful day today. It feels so good to go out and spend some time in the sun. The boys were ultra relaxed during grooming, and the footing on the strip was much better. I started out with loping figure-eights pretty early and my first session of this was fantastic. Almost every loop… Read more »

You Can Do a Lot at the Walk

I read this from Ray Hunt, somewhere.  And it is what I had running through my head during today’s ride.  I’ve had great momentum and excitement to get out to the barn lately, but I don’t want my exuberance to overcome what my soon to be 17 year old horse can handle.  The next few… Read more »

Harder Than it Had to Be

A few days ago I was reading an article about a trainer at a dude ranch, and he mentioned pushing horses in a pen or pasture just enough so they respect you as the one in charge.  This is nothing new to me, but it did give me another perspective about trying to get Bear… Read more »