Axel is a Dressage Horse!

Tricia and I went out for a ride yesterday. After last weekend's ride I was a little wary on how the horses were going to act. Tricia brought her dressage saddle and bridle to try out on Axel. Mostly we just wanted to see how he'd go in a different bit. After we did our best to brush a thousand pounds of mud off them, I put my english saddle on Cody and we went out to the yard. Right from the start they were acting like dorks. It was super windy and it was supposed to rain.

We walked around to the front of the house and right as we got there Tom opened the house door. Both horses spooked. So that was a fabulous start to our ride. Tricia must have really gotten to Axel, because after that he was an angel. Cody on the other hand, was still all worked up. We got up on the road and road past the nursery. They had some piles of mulch or something covered with big white tarps that were blowing around in the wind. Neither horse really reacted until we were past. Then Cody refused to go any further. He'd back into the ditch and try and head back towards the barn. It took several tries, with Tricia ponying us, or getting off and leading us, to get Cody moving in the right direction. I finally managed to figure out what to do with him, with Tricia coaching. I guess we have two problems. One is that now that Cody is the #2 man he's even more herd bound than before. And the second issue is that he doesn't think of me as the boss. Luckily Tricia was able to get me some pointers on how to keep Cody thinking about me so that he didn't have time to think about the herd or the scary tarp. In the end we made it down the dirt road, turned around and rode back to the barn, into the wind. It was like a wind tunnel.

Cody was pretty well behaved on the way back, he was a little high strung but atleast he was moving in the right direction the whole time. Tricia gave me a different bit to try on him next time as well. Axel was a complete superstar in his dressage outfit. He loved the big and chewed on it the whole time. She said he needed a lot of leg but he moved right into the bit and was even foaming a bit. So I think we havea winning combination for Axel - a nice D ring snaffle, lots of leg, and a direct rein. Of course having a really good rider doesn't hurt ;)

Now I'll just have to figure out Cody's winning combination. Atleast when he gets high strung he doesn't bolt or runaway. He just likes to back into the ditch! Unfortunately my photos were really blurry this time. Time to get a new camera ;)