Birds and Cats and Mice . . . oh my!

The biggest issue with riding a really smart horse is that they figure out your buttons and they plan, evaluate and evade with the best of them. Some days it's very  similar to dealing with a five year old, 1000 lb toddler. You might remember that we discussed the "scary" end of the arena with the communicator, and although it has gotten so much better, Ashke still finds reasons to "spook", get tense and reactive at that end . . .  but only in the canter . . . almost always. When he was asked why his answer was that birds are related to dinosaurs (typical five year old answer) and therefor very scary.

He does have a reason to complain. I am now riding five days a week (with Friday and one other day off a week), our rides have expanded in length to be at the least a forty-five minute ride, and we are really working on our canter. See, canter is the hardest gait for us to maintain smoothly, be adjustable within, move our shoulders and hip around. Plus, I get really winded in the canter, which means I need to do a lot of it to strengthen my ability to ride. So, our target time is 45 minutes in the evening, with the exception of our lesson on Wednesday, with a target of 30 minutes of canter. This is not too much for him, because his breathing doesn't get heavy til right at the end, and even after extensive canter he is never sweaty.

I have a fit poneh.

So that takes us back to evading . . . he can't get out of work from a fitness level and the work load has increased, so that leaves spooking. I have pretty much closed the door on spooking at the far end, and now that is reserved for late in our ride. Last night, we had much productivity at that end of the arena, so, I moved to the other end of the arena to practice extending the length of our canter before we are both sweating like a call girl on nickel night. He was a bit pissed at me because we were practicing our drum pattern starting to the left and in his mind THAT IS NOT ALLOWED!

On top of that, T called during our practicing the drums and we walked quietly in a circle as I parented from horseback. Ashke thought that meant we were done and was a tad bit put out by my requiring him to go back to work. Finally, out of a sense of self-preservation, we just worked on a 15 m circle, at the canter, emphasizing rhythm and adjustability without worrying about too much collection. We were riding circles around the outside of the cones I had set up and as we came around the west side, Ashke threw his head up and tried to bolt.

One nice thing about a leverage bit, those bolts don't go very far. We backed up from our abrupt halt and then I asked him to go forward again, while looking around for what might have caused the spook.

Wary, wary dangerous.

Belle was pooping in the sand right at the edge of the arena, next to the door into the small part of the barn. She was somewhat hidden behind the mounting block (which is scary in and of itself) and Ashke started acting like a complete idiot. He got backed up in a circle, yelled at and finally swatted with an open hand (in a glove) on the side of the neck. 

And then we did another ten minutes of canter in both direction while I struggled with a horse that absolutely couldn't horse. Once we got two revolutions of our self-prescribed circle with a horse that remembered he was a dressage prodigy, I was done. 

Sometimes I really wonder why I keep torturing myself this way . . . .