The buck stops here

I love this cartoon... I try REALLY hard not to do that to Alex.  I am seriously cold natured, but I fight my urges.  Today we had a couple hours of snow, and I have to admit I was fretting a little bit about the fact that Alex only had on is turn-out sheet.  He does have his full coat (this being his first winter north of Florida I didn't think it was fair to clip him and he's really not shaggy), so he was fine :-)  After the snow, it warmed up 10 degrees and everything melted.  Welcome to Kentucky!

Last night we started our ride pretty well.  He was a lot less amped than he had been Tuesday night which was a plus and there weren't quite as many gremlins.  What was really awesome was the canter work.  No bucks!  This isn't a first, but it is a first since we started back into work and it was so nice.  His balance was also better which is another big plus. 

After the flat-work, we moved on to Exercise #6 - A Grid of Trot-Poles





The book suggests that you start with poles A & D and then add poles B & C once the horse is comfortable.  Since Alex had already trotted confidently over poles A & B when I set them up to make the chute for Exercise #1, I decided to set up poles A, B & C.  He did them really confidently, no hesitation, but he did tap/step on the third pole at least once in both directions.  This may have been my fault, the distances might have been a little tight, we'll adjust next time.  It will take some time for me to gauge his natural stride.  Overall I'm happy with how he handled the new challenge.  Soon it will be time to start him over jumps.  I hope that he's going to like jumping just as much :-)

Tonight was Alex's night off, and we will go back to work on Thursday.  I think we will stick with three poles again and I will try to get the distance right.  If that goes well, we'll move on to four poles.  I have to admit I'm a little excited about that... who would have ever thought I'd be excited about trot-poles?!