Gymnastics

After three days off, Buddy was pretty lazy when I rode Saturday.  We just hacked around, didn't really work on much except getting him forward and off my leg.  He did start anticipating the upwards canter transitions, so we did some serpentines and figure 8s at the walk. Once he was quiet and walking forward into the contact we did some canter transitions.  They were really nice.  I need to remember to not let him rush into the transitions and make him wait.

Today I set up a little gymnastic; a bounce to one stride.  I started with an cross rail to a couple ground poles.  We did it a few times to warm up, then I dropped my stirrups and we did it a few more times.  I definitely need to keep doing that! 

I put up a vertical, so it was the x bounce to the vertical.  This was little tough for Bud.  He tend to get lazy after a few trot fences, so the first time he just trotted the x and kinda fell over the vertical.  I tried to stay neutral and let him figure it out.  The next time, I gave him a tap with my crop at the base of the x.  Worked much better!

Once I had the second vertical up, and Buddy was going forward, I tried to stay up with chest and stretch down thru my heels.  That's the thing I love about gymnastics; I just have to get Bud to the first fence and then just focus on me.  At the end, for fun I tied my reins in my knot and did it once with no hands.  SO MUCH FUN!!

Buddy says Hi!