Saturday, November 13, 2010

There goes the sun

My Huey-riding schedule has been Sun-Mon-Tues, with the Mon-Tues rides happening after work. With the time change, the sun is now going down at 5:15 (soon to be 4:45), so my usual schedule is now a problem. I think I'm going to try to continue riding on Tuesdays, going in to work very early so I can get off at 3:30. Early mornings and root canals rank about the same in my book, so we'll see if I can pull this off. I really don't want to end up riding just once a week with a lesson here and there.

Lately Huey has started a seasick head-waggling on the right-lead canter. I think he's just trying to avoid really taking contact on the outside rein. I've been asking him to stretch down until the waggling stops, and then slowly bringing him back up. That's been working pretty well. Yesterday I worked on a canter square with him, half-halting the corners on both reins, and that fixed the waggle, too. Whatever gets his nose out in front of the vertical rather than ducking behind is the key. Yesterday we also worked on shoulder-in to travers in canter. At first he wanted to run away, but after a bit he settled and did very well.

Willow has been started over crossrails and is doing well. In about ten days I'm off to Wolf and Sue's ranch in Blanco, TX, for Thanksgiving. It sounds like there'll be some training horses there for me to hop on. Yay! Then, I'm off to the Guadalajara International Book Fair!

1 comment:

Kathleen @ ForgingAhead said...

I'm a morning rider so am happy to have the newfound light but the short days are super hard. Have fun in TX!