A Good Ride

After Sunday's wet trail ride we had left all the blankets and whatnot laying around the barn to dry. So when I got there last night I got everything put away and discovered that some of the lead ropes were still wet and my grooming box was still damp and had water in the bottom of it.

The horses have decided to see if they can find any grass in the one clump of trees in the pasture. The clump of trees that is not cleared out at all. So when I went to fetch Axel, he along with part of Kalani, Papillon, and Daley were hiding in the trees. That's the first time I've seen anyone in there, it's pretty thick and hard to get around. It was reported that the horses were quite cranky yesterday after the trail ride on Sunday but Axel seemed to be in an acceptable mood and followed me willingly back to the barn. No one else followed us though.

After I groomed Axel and scratched some of his bug bites we went out in the yard where he helped mow the lawn while I cleaned out my grooming box. He was not pleased when I was done and wanted him to go back into the barn. I finally got around to switching back to my regular dressage blanket instead of the nice white one and I re-situated the therapy pad under the saddle so everything is all ship shape now. Axel has apparently grown into his dressage bridle. Originally we thought it was way too small but now it seems to fit alright. I doubt it would fit with the flash but I haven't found any reason to use a flash so it's probably lost in my tack trunk anyway.

When we got out to the pasture to school Steph arrived to work on some lunging with Kalani in the same pasture. I let Axel have several slow paced warm up laps at the walk. I worked on not nagging him so much if he was going in the right direction. He was tending towards the gate though so our mosey had to come to an end. We had our usual disjointed and random trotting. The pasture is just enough bumpy that Axel can't keep a good steady pace and kind of stumbles all over instead of trotting nicely. After a bit of that I asked for a canter on a long stretch. Axel gave me the canter, didn't protest and it went quite nicely. I asked for a canter a second time. This time I was pretty sure I even got the other lead (albeit the wrong one). Because I wasn't totally sure I asked one more time, I got the left lead in the correct direction. I switched directions, asked again, this time I got the right lead. Yipee! I just about flew off his back when dismounting. Two canters on each lead with no bucking or putting his head between his legs, that's a winner in my book. So Axel got un-tacked and left to graze right then and there.

Steph was still working Kalani who was doing a fabulous Saddlebred interpretation with his tail so I got Cody out to do a little ground work. I don't think we've done anything since Andrea started riding. He was a little wound up about it and not terribly calm. He also was having issues going to the left. Speeding around and when I asked for a canter he'd disunite after the first stride. He was looking slightly off so I think part of it was just sore from the trail ride and getting reshod the day before. Once he gave me a real canter we stopped that and worked on just a little bit of backing up and standing still. And then he got to graze a bit too.