Lots of Riding

Cody went first tonight. I groomed outside and I'm glad I did, the hair was flying. Luckily both horses are starting to get a bit shiny so maybe there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Cody and I started with some of the bending exercises from the previous day. It only took a few spins before he remembered what I wanted. We did a few circles as well and then I tacked up to ride. I was going to try some circling techniques from the Stacy Westfall demo. The point was to keep a bend using the inside rein, keep traveling in the circle, and then work on widening the circle with the outside rein. He's supposed to gain some balance in his movements and then we're supposed to work into a figure 8 where half the 8 is counter bent. We didn't make it to the figure 8 but he did pretty well with trotting in the circle. I worked on some of the bending from in the saddle as well and that took a few more spins than on the ground. I asked for some canter as well. He took several tries to get into the right lead canter and picked up the wrong lead a few times until I counter bent him in a corner. The left lead canter he picked up on the first try but wasn't terribly excited to maintain it for any length of time. We had a few good downward transitions from trot to halt or walk. We even had some fairly decent halts. I need to add more backing up to our halts but I did make sure I never asked him to move forward out of the halt, we only changed directions. He's definitely started to figure out that when I'm going to dismount I want him facing away from the gate in the opposite end of the arena and that I do not want him to try and turn around to look at the gate. The nice thing about Cody is that with consistent work a person can really see his improvements.

Axel only had some minor screaming bouts while we were in the arena. When I took Axel out of the pasture and groomed him at the rail, Cody ran around a bit and made fuss. I took Axel in the arena and we did some lunging before working on the bow. The bow work didn't go quite as well as yesterday but I think it's a slow process. I was huffing and puffing by the end of our session. I picked up his foot and lowered his head over and over again. Every once in a while I'd tempt him with a treat. One instance he bit my finger which still hurts, my own fault but dang. That will just help me not use treats very often for this trick. One time he touched his knee to the ground and I patted him and praised him. Another time he had his head all the way upside down nearly touching the ground so he got praise for that one as well. Of course I tried to video tape both the bow work and riding Cody but my aiming skills are less than stellar so it's back to the drawing board on that one. I'll see what I can piece together and add them later.

The lady that owns Danny came in right as we were finishing so I asked if she wanted to ride down the road. I tacked up and she and I went down the road and then up the next block. She thought the total trip was about 4 miles. The brown western saddle is a lot harder than my butt tends to like. Axel did pretty good and kept up with Danny and I don't think Danny was being held back at all. He didn't even try to kick him until the end of the ride but he was also stomping his foot spontaneously which we later found out was due to a stone stuck in his frog. Cody was having a minor fit when we left and one when we returned but I suppose he just kept up with the fit while we were gone we just couldn't hear him. I think he's at least changed his fits from pacing and screaming to just standing and screaming so he wasn't sweaty at all when we got back.

I will probably run out tomorrow again for a few minutes and just do some groundwork to give each horse a chance to get out of the pasture away from the other horse. I still hope that they will eventually figure out that it isn't the end of the world when one of them leaves.