More Work for Cody

Lots of action at the barn tonight, some of the other boarders had their farrier out doing shoes and whatnot and the barn owners were out working on the yard. I groomed Cody outside, he's just about done shedding just a few long hairs left. He stood fairly patiently and was watching the dogs and the barn owners in the yard instead of longing after the horses in the other pasture. I put him in the arena to tack up and as soon as I put the saddle on his back, before I even cinched it up, he started in with the yawning. I'm going to have to have Dr. Westman out to do some chiropractic work on him and see if that helps at all in addition to the dental work and having his sheath cleaned.

I lunged him for a bit at the walk and trot. He wasn't too keen on cantering on the lunge and I didn't have the whip. He remembered the bending exercise really well also so I mounted up and off we went. He was fairly distracted by all the goings on but he was listening pretty well. We did some circles in the corners of the arena at the walk and then we trotted a big circle for quite a while working on the bend and relaxing and then a little bit on making the circle wider.

We moved back onto the rail and when he was trotting calmly I asked for the canter. He actually picked up the first lead pretty well. The other direction took a few tries including one run off into the wall but the bending helped get his attention back where it belonged. It was warm in the arena and we had worked pretty hard. In fact we hadn't even worked on the halt at all because we hadn't stopped moving. Another boarder came in with her horse to do some groundwork so Cody and I worked on the halt at the far end of the arena. He seems to be getting better at it. And I've started asking him to back up when we stop. He's reluctant at first but after I ask-he fights-he gives in, then the next time he gets it right. Slowly but surely.

And just for the sake of it I started with a cue to get Cody to pick up his front foot to work on teaching him to bow as well. I've decided to start with the horses picking up their hoof, then holding their hoof up, then I'll move onto the bowing part. When all was said and done I went to put Cody's saddle down and get his lead rope, Danny was learning what hobbles were, and the other boarder grabbed a pitch fork. Something spooked Cody and he flew backwards, not sure what it was but he stopped and was fine. He backed out of the barn aisle like a champ (hey Axel, take a hint!).