Forward to Progress

It seems I have some catching up to do.  Totally intended to do another post on Saturday, but well... we all see how that went :-)

 

Saturday morning I went out to the farm earlier than usual since we were leaving town for the afternoon and evening.  We had some MAJOR fog going on when I left the house and it continued all the way to the farm.  This is what encountered when I went out to catch Alex for our ride.

 

There's an Alex in there somewhere!

 

"Who me?  You want me?"

 

"Ain't nobody got time for that..."

 

"Ok fine... I see you come bearing gifts."

The fog wasn't much of an issue for our ride, since we're still using the indoor.  I decided to just work him on the flat, since I had a schedule to keep and didn't have time to be dragging jumps around.  Alex started out well both on the lunge and in the saddle.  The ride wasn't bad... he didn't do anything bad he just wanted to battle.  He really wanted to fight the bit and started throwing his head around to resist.  I knew I had to win the battle because otherwise he'd think this was acceptable behavior.  That damn smart horse... every time I'd get somewhere and be about to be finished, he'd go back and do something else I had fix.  By the time we got done, both of us were sweating and puffing.  Of course this meant he'd need a bath... there went my schedule, right out the window.  Such is life with horses.

 

Alex had his usual day of leisure on Sunday, although he did get a bath because he'd been naked for two days and turned into pig pen.  Today I got out to the farm early since I'd left work to go to the dentist.  I set the cross-rail with the extra trot poles on the other side of the arena.  His flat work was SO much better other than a few little spooks and he did really well over the little gymnastic, so I was very pleased. 

 

They say patience is a virtue and man is that ever true with my horse.  You can't get impatient or frustrated.  You just have to keep the horse moving forward and work out the kinks.

 

Tomorrow will probably be more of the same and then I'm hoping to get back to our two jump grid by the end of the week.