Consistency?

I just really like this photo of Cody from this summer. I haven't been great with the camera lately, especially when there's so many people around at the barn. I'll have to make up for that this winter and maybe even bring my big camera out of hiding.

Yesterday was farrier day so I went out to the barn pretty early to fetch up the horses and be there when everyone arrived. Axel was a bit of a pill and jumped around when the farrier had his back left. And he tried to kick Diva several times when she passed by. Cody was pretty much as normal. He just wanted to see every direction at once.

I set up some cones in the arena to work on some trotting, kind of the NSEW exercise. It went sort of okay. Then we worked on some circles since the outside of the NSEW pattern makes a nice circle. We're having consistency issues. We go slow around a couple corners then speed up or almost canter around another corner. We have a hard time turning away from the gate and then the opposite corner of the gate he cuts in and speeds up (maybe cuz that's the first time he sees the gate again?). So there was a lot of "trot-easy-trot-easy" going on. We worked a bit on cantering with the same issues getting around that corner by the gate. J was watching and telling me to put my outside leg on. Our other issue is lack of bending and lack of understanding what I'm asking. I try and ask for a bend with my inside leg on the girth but he thinks that means speed up or canter. And trying to get him to move off that inside leg to keep the circle wide gets the same result. I'm not sure what we should work on in respect too all those issues. Do we work on maintaining a constant speed first and then add the bend? Or vice versa? I will have to think on that a bit.

We spent a few minutes working on turn on the forehand in the corner of the arena. The wall helps block forward movement but the turn on the haunches is another story. I tried to back into the corner to work on that but we weren't as successful. And our backing up issue is still there. I've changed to verbal-wiggle reins-more rein-smack on shoulder. I'm hoping if I keep that up consistently we'll get down to only needing verbal or the rein wiggle. The smack on the shoulder right now gets his attention and he'll back a few steps quite lively. We might have to spend a day only working on that, once he gets it I think we'll be fine.