Relax a little, Booker

Well Mr Booker decided since he found a hole in the hay net he didn't want to give that up and took off when I came into the paddock. Luckily he didn't go far and I was able to catch him fairly easily.

I tacked, fly sprayed, and walked out to the middle pasture. I had some tagalongs but we were able to get through the gates without too much trouble. Made sure the saddle was on straight and mounted up. He stood pretty still for once (didn't want to leave the group at the gate I'm sure). So we walked the pasture to check out the footing and what not. Did some big trot circles at the far end. He wasn't settling in, was pretty "up" about it all, nothing horrible, just not a nice easy trot. I'm pretty sure he was concerned with his buddies. So I was going to work on cantering big straights but I changed my plans since he seemed more likely to ignore me.

So the plan was, walk or trot away from the gate, if he gave me a super easy trot, or if he transitioned down to a walk easily, or a good halt with out turning or wandering, then we turned around and went back towards the gate as his reward. I decided that for me at least, when I ask for a trot or a canter I want something super mellow and easy by default. I figured he's got the speed and I think if we keep light aids (which shouldn't be an issue if we work on getting him back to a snaffle) then he won't get sticky and it should be easy to let him "go" when we need it. I don't think we're going to be winning big dollars in the mounted shooting and it sounds like speed isn't necessarily the way to do that anyways. So consistency on his part and steadiness and all that I think would be more applicable to other stuff like trail riding etc.

He was getting good at the halt, I'd do voice "and whoa", then stiffen my body, then reins. Still had to do a couple tugs on the reins for halt but he was catching on and doing really well just standing there. Trot to walk transitions went pretty well too, I'd just change my body from posting to a more stiff sit and he'd transition down. I did do one canter just to see but it was pretty vertical and big so I didn't do more of that. He transitioned down pretty well though.

When I finally asked for a trot and he just broke into a super easy nice trot, I stopped him and got off. So I think that's the kind of thing I'm going to work on when I ride. That seems pretty simple and I get some variety of gait to get used to his movement. I'll just have to make sure I let him extend from time to time.

So his leg looks super awesome. I didn't clean it but there's barely a spot left of scab or whatever. Probably by Friday if we clean it there'll be nothing under that tiny scab. Then we can start putting some MTG on there and get the hair to grow back.