As I mentioned at the end of my last post, the one good thing that came out of Banner's little injury and my subsequent panicking was that it finally allowed me a chance to take Charmer out to my lesson this Tuesday! I'd been trying to set up time to take him instead of Banner for a little while, but my schedule hasn't really allowed it to happen unfortunately.
I've been able to keep up a reasonable amount of consistency with Charmer lately, which has been nice. And we are slowly working on improving his strength and adding in some jumps again. I have an annoying tendency to get very in my own head about riding him so I knew as we progressed, I needed to prioritize a lesson sooner rather than later so that I could get some good direction on how to improve with him.
We arrived in the early afternoon Tuesday, and he was his nice calm, cool collected self on the ground. He's incredibly well mannered and handleable on the ground, and he lived at our training facility long enough that he's quite relaxed there! I tacked up early and quickly and gave him a quick lunge. He actually didn't buck or anything on the line and seemed to work out of his minimal stiffness quickly (thank you Cosequin ASU!).
After our brief lunge we headed over to the big ring. Its been probably a year and a half since he's been in there! Even the couple of field trips we have taken have all been in the other, smaller rings. There were 2 other horses in the ring when I came in, and again we haven't ridden with other horses in the ring for a very long time, but Charmer took to it like a fish to water. All those years of racehorse living taught him how to settle into new environments quickly (even if this isn't exactly a new environment).
We walked, trotted and cantered around like a reasonably civilized creature with only a few teeny moments of weirdness, but that was pretty expected since he's out of shape and hasn't been out in a while! Trainer C came in and we showed off out basic trot work along with where we're at with our canter work. Then we moved on to cantering over a pole. This really highlighted his main weakness of not sitting down on his hind end. He's pretty active in his front end right now but isn't quite sitting down with his hind yet, so she decided to have me try an exercise in the canter before we moved onto jumps.
We would canter a half 15m circle off of the rail and then leg yield back to the long side, transition back down to trot and pick up the other lead to do the same back the other way. This funky little figure 8 really helped Charmer to find his inside hind leg & sit down a bit more. Once this improved (and he started to get a bit tired) we moved on to the last little bit of our lesson, popping over a cute little x-rail!
We used a placing pole and a nice little x-rail that was probably about 15-18" in the center. We started off trotting over it each way and got some lovely little jumps. We also worked on tight turns on the haunches on the backside to shift his weight back onto his hind end before we transitioned back to trot. A few really nice transitions, and it will just keep getting better as his strength improves!
Our very last exercise was finally cantering the little x-rail a few times, and we got some awesome passes! I've worked really hard to improve as a rider over the last couple of years and I was really able to ride him proactively and positively while also settling his wild on the backside of the fence. It was really nice to feel some of that hard work pay off. I'm desperately hoping to really get him back in the local show ring this year and keep him going. It's been SO much fun to bring him back into work!
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| Photos from an unrelated jump ride at home! |
I've been able to keep up a reasonable amount of consistency with Charmer lately, which has been nice. And we are slowly working on improving his strength and adding in some jumps again. I have an annoying tendency to get very in my own head about riding him so I knew as we progressed, I needed to prioritize a lesson sooner rather than later so that I could get some good direction on how to improve with him.
We arrived in the early afternoon Tuesday, and he was his nice calm, cool collected self on the ground. He's incredibly well mannered and handleable on the ground, and he lived at our training facility long enough that he's quite relaxed there! I tacked up early and quickly and gave him a quick lunge. He actually didn't buck or anything on the line and seemed to work out of his minimal stiffness quickly (thank you Cosequin ASU!).
After our brief lunge we headed over to the big ring. Its been probably a year and a half since he's been in there! Even the couple of field trips we have taken have all been in the other, smaller rings. There were 2 other horses in the ring when I came in, and again we haven't ridden with other horses in the ring for a very long time, but Charmer took to it like a fish to water. All those years of racehorse living taught him how to settle into new environments quickly (even if this isn't exactly a new environment).
 |
| Sometimes he's a little extra |
We walked, trotted and cantered around like a reasonably civilized creature with only a few teeny moments of weirdness, but that was pretty expected since he's out of shape and hasn't been out in a while! Trainer C came in and we showed off out basic trot work along with where we're at with our canter work. Then we moved on to cantering over a pole. This really highlighted his main weakness of not sitting down on his hind end. He's pretty active in his front end right now but isn't quite sitting down with his hind yet, so she decided to have me try an exercise in the canter before we moved onto jumps.
We would canter a half 15m circle off of the rail and then leg yield back to the long side, transition back down to trot and pick up the other lead to do the same back the other way. This funky little figure 8 really helped Charmer to find his inside hind leg & sit down a bit more. Once this improved (and he started to get a bit tired) we moved on to the last little bit of our lesson, popping over a cute little x-rail!
We used a placing pole and a nice little x-rail that was probably about 15-18" in the center. We started off trotting over it each way and got some lovely little jumps. We also worked on tight turns on the haunches on the backside to shift his weight back onto his hind end before we transitioned back to trot. A few really nice transitions, and it will just keep getting better as his strength improves!
Our very last exercise was finally cantering the little x-rail a few times, and we got some awesome passes! I've worked really hard to improve as a rider over the last couple of years and I was really able to ride him proactively and positively while also settling his wild on the backside of the fence. It was really nice to feel some of that hard work pay off. I'm desperately hoping to really get him back in the local show ring this year and keep him going. It's been SO much fun to bring him back into work!
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