Making It Happen: Yee Haw Edition

Tension ho!

Sometimes, Courage is brilliant and perfect. Sometimes, he's a little less than that. As our partnership develops (geez, who thought I'd still be saying -that- a year in?), I'm getting more comfortable with pushing through the bad parts and riding whatever he throws my way.

I mentioned that I thought Courage would be wild Monday due to having the whole weekend off.

He wasn't.

We had a great ride with lots of quality work.

That mean, horrible happymouth mullen

So obviously, I expected that Tuesday's ride would be fun and easy and popping over little jumps and maybe a little hack around the field.

It wasn't.

I hopped on, Courage meandered around the arena until he saw his "spooky spot", and then his whole body locked on and his brain nearly left his head.

Oh the joys of a freshly-clipped fit horse on a brisk fall day.

Developing some softness in the canter

Instead of cruising around and popping over teeny jumps, we went into full on "re-install the brain" mode. So yeah, lots of transitions and bending and lateral work on ever-expanding figure eights so that by the end of the session, Courage was trotting through his favorite halloween haunt without even thinking about the potential spooks.

And then I was like "Well hell, if he's being this good, he might as well jump anyways".

So we did. We cantered around and did some skinnies and little 2' verticals and I worked on neither pushing nor pulling--just sitting chilly and letting him canter to the base in a good rhythm without jetting off after.

Well that looks good

By the end of our ride, I was really pleased. Courage didn't come out to work today, but I stepped up and insisted. He is rarely really determined to be naughty, and we were able to work through it and end on a good note.

It's not just about this particular ride--it's about him recognizing me as leader in difficult situations. Today, it was in our home arena. Next year? Hopefully we can have the same conversation in a show arena, but it will go even more smoothly because of all the time I've put in doing work like this.