Where did my pony go?

After our great ride on Saturday where I had a forward, willing pony our lesson last night was a but of a let down. I gave Bud Sunday and Monday off, as I had to work and do barn chores and had no energy left for him. Tuesday was an easy bareback hack ad Bud was forward and willing. Awesome! Wednesday he got lunged and my thought was that I would have a forward, ready-to-work Buddy on Thursday for our lesson.

Nope not even close. He was totally behind my leg, cranky, and crabby. We started over a large X at the trot to the left, working on counter bend in the turn then keeping him straight and on the track on our approach. We got a couple decent ones before we moved on.

Jen had me do a couple rollback turns to 4 single fences. The first two fences were awful then we found a bit of a motor. Our second attempt wasn't much better. He would get pissed every time I sat deep and asked him to go forward and when I popped him withy crop he actually bucked. We went to just schooling the big X to the second fence, a vertical till we got a turn we were happy with. I opted to take a more hunter turn, going out more and loosing the rollback. It made Buddy happy and at that point that's all I cared about.

From there Jen had me school a single oxer on a circle to the right. It was slightly uphill and 90% of the time I found a waiting stride that I wasn't comfortable with. Holding Bud when he's not forward always makes me feel like we won't make it over the fence and I usually chicken out. But we worked through it and I'm glad we did. I need to get comfortable with those situations, I know at some point at a show he's going to be backed off and I will have fences I'll need to hold him too. If I can't do it at home, no way will I be able to do it at a show!