Too Much vs. Too Little Energy

Today I was supposed to be riding in this, but due to being sick all last week I didn't have time to prepare for it. I was very sad to miss it, especially since Henrik isn't coming back from Denmark again until March. Hopefully by then I'll be super prepared and Ben will be in better shape than he is now. On the bright side at least I saved myself $200 by not attending!

So instead I took Ben out for a ride to Barnabee today. After 10 days of no work, he was full of energy and I on the other hand am just getting mine back. There were a bunch of construction workers there today driving around in their tractors and making all sorts of noise. A couple loads of gravel and heavy rock were also delivered, which added to the craziness. Under these conditions I figured it was best to not ride Ben the full 45 minutes. Honestly I didn't know if my cough would have even allowed me too anyway. So I lunged him for 20 minutes (10 in each direction) and let him get all of his bucks and silliness out. Then I hooked him up to some side reins for 5 minutes to see how he would react. I have never used them with him before and he looked really sad wearing them, so that didn't last long. For the last 20 minutes I got on him and rode. That proved to be just the right amount of time. Since he was already a little tired at that point he was very easy to handle and performed really well for me. I didn't ask him to do anything too hard or complicated though. Mostly we just worked on balance, stretching, bending and lots of changes of direction.