Warm-up at the Canter

Today I had a riding lesson and since I hadn't ridden Ben since last Wednesday he was very antsy and it was hard to get him to concentrate and relax. Ulla thought it was best to warm him up at the canter and that really seemed to work well. At first we just cantered along the track of the arena a couple of times and then we worked on a figure 8 and changing leads at X through the trot. After he was relaxed with that we changed it up a bit so one of the 20 meter circles was at the trot and then after the change of lead at X we'd start cantering in the other direction. This helped a lot and really got him to concentrate and move forward. We also worked on the large figure 8 the full length of the arena and crossing the long diagonals. At times it was a bit hard since the sun started to break through the clouds and was practically blinding me when I was riding from A to C along the long side.

Ulla also had be work on creating Ben's forward power and keeping it consistent with no resistance by lightly tapping or tickling him with the whip until he would give. At first he was a little annoyed by the whip, but once he gave up the resistance I stopped with the tickling as a reward. This really worked and for the last 10 minutes of the lesson Ben was performing at his full potential. It was a little frustrating to take almost the full lesson to get that far, but I guess I should expect much when he had the last 4 days off, there was a rain storm for the first half of the lesson and I had just given him his Adequan injection while tacking up. Hopefully I'll be able to find someone else to be able to help me ride him more consistently so I don't have to deal with this attitude of his every time I ride.