Still Trying

Friday Jeff had a photoshoot so I had more time than usual to visit the horses before going out to the farm. Axel needed his shot and I had time to do more work than that. Both horses were pretty crusty so it took a while to get them groomed.

I put Axel in the arena (with his bell boots on) and he trotted around for a few minutes, lifting his back legs up as far as they'd go. At least he was working a little harder since he was annoyed at his boots. When he started to get lazy and just wander around I grabbed the lunge line and had him walk on a circle. I only had him work for 5 minutes total including both directions. Near the end of that 5 minutes (going counter clockwise I think) he started to get annoyed with me and fling his front legs out like he was doing the Spanish Walk. I think Axel has perhaps forgotten some of his ground manners and thinks that work (no matter how easy it is) is not on his agenda. So I'll continue to work him little by little until this first month of Adequan is over and then we'll start trotting more and maybe some riding.

Cody was crustier than Axel since he was a ball of sweat on Wednesday and rolled in the dust. I debated on what I was going to do with him when A came in to ride Vinnie. I decided to tack up Cody and just ride in the arena. He was calm in the cross ties until Vinnie went into the arena then he started to get restless. He did pretty good in the arena. I did some circles in both directions before I got on just to make sure he was paying attention to me and not Vinnie.

We walked and trotted and, if you can believe, cantered on the left lead after only 2 tries. We manged the right lead as well but it was pretty spastic and short lived. When Vinnie stopped in the middle Cody had a hard time not darting into the center to stop, we'll have to work on that more. But considering how bad our ride was on Wednesday it was a nice change, though we didn't try going outside. I'm wondering if it's worth it to get Cody walking down the road in hand instead of undersaddle.