Wizard Ride 157: Save it for Later

Wednesday, 7/14/10

Wizard and I had the indoor arena to ourselves on Wednesday night, as well as a nice little setup of traffic cones and trot poles. After our warmup, we practiced serpentines and bending exercises. I tried my best to ride to the wall with each pass since I have a horrible habit of not using the entire loop. A well-ridden serpentine can have several more strides than a sloppy one. We did a little lateral practice, leg yielding left and right at the walk and trot, and asking for shoulder-fore for a few strides. We rode loops around the cones, and a small and skinny figure 8 around two big barrels that were also in the arena.

Our canter work was good. The transition from trot to canter is still awkward but it improves with every ride. Wizard usually picks up the correct lead on the first or second attempt. While we were cantering on the left lead, he spotted a little pile of horse manure in his path and skipped over it- a perfect flying lead change! He’ll have to save it for much later down the road in our training, but it’s nice to know it’s in there :^)