Since I do not have a saddle that fits my girl yet, we are going back to square one. The lunge line. I’m going to be very aggressive with the ground work with my filly. She needs it and I think I do to. So after about a week off from horse land, a landslide of work and out of town holiday guests made that pretty easy, it was time to put my new ground work plan into action. I hiked to the back field and got my girl ready for some ground work in the indoor ring. It was the first time I put her splint boots on her and being a race horse she didn’t bat an eye to them and lucky me they fit. (Cuz nothing ever seems to fit my girl) Next up her cavason, my gloves, a dressage whip and off to the ring we went. It was a quiet afternoon at the barn which helps keep her focused. Though my barn is a boarders only barn with no lesson program, it can be a very active place. Today was calm and quiet…score!
My first command to her was “Out” we’ve worked on this before and she readily complied with walking in a circle on the line as today she didn’t forget she spoke English, which she sometimes does when shes being stubborn. We walked to warm up then we went right into trot. “Trot” is another command we’ve been working on. I’m pretty sure she has no idea what this voice command mean yet but she did trot. Trot, trot, trot, zoom, zoom, zoom after a few minutes she slowed down to a really pretty relaxed easy collected trot. She was beautiful, this girl is a really pretty mover. Now her bending leaves a lot to be desired and by that I mean she well doesn’t bend. She also is still working on making an actual circle. Her circles are more in the shape of a capital D but with practice and patience I’m sure we will get there. We did some transitions from trot to walk from walk to trot and she was really doing well. She wanted to work, I think she must have been bored during her week off. After about 10 minutes we worked the other direction and my girl did great. She again got into the grove of that collected slow trot with her neck extended and low looking mighty fine.
Our 20 minutes of work was up and I couldn’t have been happier with her trying so hard for me. Before we left the indoor arena I took her to the other end where someone had left couple of ground poles down on the ground. I decided to trot her over the poles to see how she reacted to them. We did a couple of trot circles to warm up then I eased her to trot over the poles and hot damn if my girl didn’t trot over the first one then jump over the second. We went again and this time she jumped over them both as if it was a baby bounce! Boing boing! I brought her in from the line and gave her a giant hug…. seems I got me jumper.