weekend riding

In reverse order.

Sunday late afternoon I rode Lady the paso fino. I am not in any hurry to try to move her but I still need to get a brand inspection, in fact its probably more important if I will keep her over the summer or longer.

I have 'corrupted her' or from endurance POV taught her a needed skill and taught Lady that its ok to eat with a rider on board. She was getting into it yesterday with new spring grass in the ditch so after a couple stops I decided she would have to wait until we were headed back to eat anymore. Plus last weekend I started experimenting with making her stop and then just doing half halts to try to get her to WALK on the way home instead of thinking she has to gait. I could always hold her to a slow paced gait but mentally she was still rushing for home and I wanted to change that. The halts were helping a lot so I decided I'd work with that tool and see how much progress can be made with it.

So yesterday I started asking her to walk a little over 1/2 a mile from home, took a couple full halts to get her attention, then half halts and when we got to the ditch and last quarter mile home I did some halts and hand on her neck which is the signal to go ahead and eat and she did :) Shade is pretty good at self care when traveling but she will rarely stop to eat on the way home. But she has almost always walked for me and with the eating when traveling I have never sweated it.

Earlier sunday afternoon I worked with Sadie. I wanted to grab her first before it got breezy and the clouds blocked the lazy sunshine effect. Well maybe I'll get lazy sunny weather next week. She was pretty frisky so I didn't get on her but she did listen pretty well, we did a couple of backs of 4-5 steps after I longed her and put two lines on to do a bit of ground driving/long lining work. She hit the bit a couple times after taking off -- and just stopped when she did so that was good. I still very much want to have a lazy sunny day to climb back on her after she's had 3 months off with snow cover and then me having the long lasting sinus problems. If it comes to it I'll send her back to Jo for a couple of weeks but I'll want to have been doing steady ground work first so that I can have her ready for maximum under saddle work while paying $$ for her to be there.

Saturday I rode Shade. I need to set up some riding dates or take the dog on Lady and then do a long ride or work out something to advance to legging up for some endurance rides before too much longer but I was still in the mood to be pretty content with just a short ride to get myself some fresh air.