Wizard Ride 246: A Change is Gonna Come

“Talent without discipline is like an octopus on roller skates. There’s plenty of movement, but you never know if it’s going to be forward, backward, or sideways.” H. Jackson Brown

Wednesday, 6/15/11

GORGEOUS weather for a morning ride. Wizard enjoyed a flake of alfalfa hay while I tacked him up, and then we went into the indoor arena for our ride. I warmed him up at the walk, first on a loose rein, then with contact. Wizard has a habit of getting “selective hearing” in the beginning of a ride with leg aids. Usually, I ride without a crop, and simply get him on my leg with lots of transitions, but today I carried a crop for the first few minutes of trot work. Wizard needed the tiniest tap just once to remember what my legs are for, and was light and responsive to leg for the rest of the ride.

At the trot, we worked on circles and along the rail, getting contact and establishing feel. Our circles turned to serpentines, as we practiced degrees of bending. Then, we got to the meat and potatoes of the ride: cantering figure 8s with simple changes at the trot.

Odd duck that he is, Wizard finds simple changes more challenging than flying lead changes. The trot-to-canter transition is still rushy and awkward for him unless we are both totally “in the zone”. I backed off on the transitions for a while and worked on improving his trot and doing lots of transitions to increase balance and power in the hind end. This seemed to help, since our attempts were a little less awkward than previous canter transition sessions. It was still less than graceful. Wizard has more difficulty picking up the left lead than the right lead most of the time, and when he gets tense, the trot in the center is not straight and is not relaxed. We got through a few figure 8s that I deemed acceptable and I ended the ride with a walk around the property to cool him out.

It is tough to decide when to push and when to step back. I always tend to step back as my first instinct, but usually Wizard does well with a gentle push.