The past two days I've ridden, Wednesday and Saturday, have been absolutely gorgeous!!! Sunny and in the low 60s!!! It's amazing considering it's March! To take advantage of the great weather I rode over at Barnabee in their outdoor arena. Compared to riding in their indoor arena, Ben is like a different horse. He has so much more energy, is more attentive, less spooky and much more willing. He's definitely an outdoor horse! It's funny because so many of the people who board their horses at Barnabee won't even dare take their horses to the outdoor arena. It's indoors only for them! So sad!
We had a great time riding both days and worked on lots of counter-bending on the serpentine and counter-cantering. I am loving teaching Ben these exercises! He is doing really well with them and since they require him to pay 100% attention to my aides, he's always right there with me. If he's not, he easily becomes unbalanced and starts moving in the wrong direction. I can tell that it's in moments of imbalance that is when he starts to resist or kicks out. It's almost like he doesn't know what you are asking him to do, gets all of his energy built up in a little ball and has to let it out some how.
After my ride on Wednesday I tackled the track again to see if it was going to be a spooky situation for him like last time. He was awesome! He walked around it like an old pro and remained calm and focused the whole time. I was very proud of him! He didn't even try to veer off the track towards the barn when we go close to the land bridge heading that way. This was a major first for him as well. I was even able to trot him a couple of times around and he stayed relaxed the whole time.
On Saturday I tried the track again and he was just as good as Wednesday. To change things up at bit, I thought I'd introduce him to the trails. He used to ride their trails just fine, but now he's totally afraid to even step foot on them. I don't know if he thinks we aren't going to come back to where the other horses are or if he senses something dangerous back there, but he'll have nothing to do with it if I try riding him on them now. So I just hopped off and coaxed him to walk beside me on them. That seemed to boost his confidence, although he still had to stop to look all around him all of the time. He seemed quite surprised and happy in the end when the trail lead us back to the track towards the barn. Maybe next time he'll be able to do it on his own? I can only hope!
I'm crossing my fingers that we'll have many more beautiful sunny days ahead of us!! Although I hear it's supposed to cool off considerably next week...SIGH!! :(
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