Wizard Ride 196: Blowin in the Wind

Wednesday, 11/17/10

If it had not rained so much the night before, I would have ridden outdoors. The weather was cool and WINDY. Our indoor arena has wonderful footing and lighting, but when the wind is extremely strong, the arena doors make a little noise. Wizard is not a spooky horse, but the wild wind and the sounds in the arena had him a little on edge today. When we were warming up, he also heard the team of horses being hitched up for a wagon ride in the woods and it was very distracting for him. He was not spooking, but sort of craning his neck to figure out what the sounds were that were coming from the outside of the arena.

We walked for a while, riding in patterns to get his mind on our work instead of the outside world. I practiced taking contact and keeping it instead of feeding the reins through my fingers (an awful habit I am trying to extinguish).

At the trot, he bounced around and fussed for the first minute or so before paying attention to me. As we continued our work, he got much more focused and by the end of the trot sets, he was listening and was on the bit. I could not ride very long since I had to get to work and needed to have him cooled out and dried before I left. Our ride was relatively short and we did not do any canter work since I was on budgeted time.

It took a while to cool him out and get him dried. He is physically very fit, but his coat is dense. Welcome, winter!