Gate Work

Thursday night and Saturday morning N and I rode together. She worked in the dressage arena while Ashke and I played around.

We started in the dressage arena working on our trot. He is getting better and it is taking longer for his back to fatigue to the point where he kind of falls apart. We are mixing the trot with some walk and then I am taking him over and playing with the obstacles they have set up.

We worked pretty hard on figuring out the gate thing. We did it one time by the end of Saturday, where I was able to open the gate, walk through and then close the gate without letting go. Our one issue is moving his hip over and standing parallel to the gate when positioning ourselves. To that end, I purchased a dressage whip that I can use to help cue him to move his hip to one side or the other. He is really good about moving in one direction, not so good in the other. My plan is to walk him at a diagonal across the dressage arena, using leg yield and reinforcing the yield with the dressage whip on his hip until I can get him to move away from that pressure when asked.

I also am going to move the poles out and set them up so we can work with them, plus do something with a tarp and tires. There are tires out there and I will provide the tarp. We also need some poles so we can work at backing around a pattern and sidepassing over a bar.

Going out today. I will see if N can get some pics of Ashke and I working the stuff.