November 13th

My Chickerbee and me :) 

Chick and I took advantage of "No Hunting on Sundays" to trail ride around the new property.  We have "no hunting/no trespassing" signs posted, but I just get nervous about it so I try to refrain from riding out there when hunting season is going on.  But today we went out to ride around and explore some more.  He was great and we had a really nice time finding new places to ride.  Its so crazy considering how incredibly spooky he was in his younger days. I am still hoping to bring him back for one more show season next year.  He's such  classy horse and he is LOVING being back in "training".

I rode Lego next and he was great! We rode for probably 40 minutes or so, cut short due to darkness in the hayfield today. We again did a gazillion circles both directions, transitioning, changing directions, etc.  I used my mom as our cone this evening so she could watch and critique.  She suggested when I am going to the left that I make my circle larger, as he was leaning in on my inside leg so much (and I simply could not get him to straighten up).  We did that and it was much better, I supposed he just isn't ready yet for the same size circle as on the right. We'll keep working on it though! Each time I changed directions he got a little better, maybe its starting to sink in?

I did some work on the collected sitting trot, which still confuses him and I can tell he isn't sure about it...but I try to stay very positive and as soon as he collects and relaxes I praise him a ton.  At the end of tons of trotting in circles I took him out into the field away from everything and worked on large shallow serpentines.  To my surprise he acted like he was actually understanding what I was asking with the change of bend! It was awesome! I did just enough of those and then we finished up and cooled out.