Saturday, October 13, 2012

Flecks fire breathing TB side emerges again!

Yeehaw!!!

Not sure if he just feels good (too good perhaps!!!) or if it's the change in feed or weather, but Fleck's been on fire lately! Since we had to cancel our lessons last week and Cindy was at the horse park this weekend for the show... we had our lesson there. It was a GREAT lesson because it brought some issues to light that aren't really noticeable at home or at high point. I had told Cindy that I wanted to work on the Training Test B test and she said that it sounded like my brain started whirling and getting ahead of myself because I was panicking. Yep... she nailed it. So the plan was to work on that. 

Only Fleck didn't quite cooperate... It was a quiet small show but Fleck was anything but. He was animated, spooky, tense and running. So... Cindy had me work through it. It took awhile but ultimately I have a few tools to use...

  • Leg yield in four strides, out four strides, in four strides, out four strides.. this helps focus us both. Or transition every four strides between stretchy trot and working trot.
  • Same thing as Julie had me do... leg yield him into the outside rein, but make sure to catch him with my outside leg.
  • When he gets fast and rushy, I try to slow him down and keep him straight by hanging onto that outside rein for dear life. I have the blisters to prove it. But all that does is give him something to lean on. AND it prevents him from being able to elongate and lengthen the outside of his body, thus preventing him from bending to the inside. My brain panics and tells me that he's not bending, he's leaning and won't get off my inside leg and his haunches are coming in. My "fix" is to swing my inside leg back, push his haunches out, hold his outside shoulder up with the outside rein, and fight. That's wrong!!! Wrong, wrong wrong!! And I know it... It makes things worse. What I need to do... is abandon him... to a point. I need to soften that outside rein so that he can elongate that side, put my inside leg forward at the girth and bend him around my inside leg. If his shoulders come in, his haunches automatically go out. I can cheat and use my inside rein a little bit to slow him down, but really need to sit him back on his haunches by using my seat and core and shoulders. This is really only an issue tracking right... Going to the left, I don't quite panic and grab as much. And while I feel like I've lost all contact on the outside rein and his head is on the ground... it's really not. He's got to drop into the contact a bit and if I focus on keeping his withers up.. his head doesn't seem so far away.
  • And when we're cantering to the right and he starts falling in and I panic like above.. another trick is to think about doing a downward to the walk and then a turn on the haunches to the inside. This gets him back onto that left hind, straightens him, and then allows him to push off back into the canter and be up in his withers. But it's blatantly obvious that this is VERY hard for us... I can cheat and even just think "turn on the haunches" without coming down to the walk. Not canter pirouettes, but a baby miniature version (at least in my head). 
  •  We did a good bit of spiral in when he resists the inside bend (noticeable rally only to the right) and then spiral back out as a reward.
So... that was the gist of it. We got some lovely canters. And some lovely trots.  But oh my was it hard!!! I was exhausted... and Flecky could have kept going! So we did... I took him on a little jaunt around the horse park. We said hi to some friends and then headed back. And then... Fleck stepped on his reins and broke his bridle. Argh... his new bridle. So then we got back to the trailer and he was trying to leave and go see Sham, who went back to his stall. I pulled his broken bridle off and his halter couldn't quite reach as he craned his head. So I unclipped his lead rope and put his halter on. Cindy was talking to me so I grabbed his lead rope and clipped him back to it. I assumed he was still tied, but I didn't check. And Peri had untied the lead rope. I went to unlock my truck and next thing I know Fleck is trotting across the parking lot to get back to Sham. Doh!! Like I said... spitting fire!

So then we came home and I decided to clip him. That big fire breathing horse just stood there, munching his alfalfa hay and let me clip his ENTIRE being... no fuss. :) Man I love him so!!!
 Furry still
 Naked pony!

ha ha... can you tell a difference? He looks fatter in the bottom pic... how odd?!!
 

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