Rode again last night, went bitless, and that may be why the Peppermint Bribe at the mounting block didn't work; he was able to scarf down the candy and immediately swing his butt away before I got my foot in the stirrup iron!
Soooo....taking the other tack suggested on this thread, I got my 4 foot long fiberglass whip, and introduced it (gently) to Quzqo's hinder end from the ground, just moving him here, there, and the other place, and tried the mounting block. He started swinging his butt away, I tried to tap him on the off side butt with the whip, but that just succeeded him in backing up totally. We did a little more ground work and came back to the mounting block, this time I kept the whip in my left hand, but kept it down, and bless him, he stood rock solid still so I could get on!!
We had a wonderful ride, he'd tried to slow down or stop a few times on his own and got a pop with the whip for his trouble. I got him into beautiful canters both directions, even managed some 20m circles to the left...and they were ROUND, not egg-shaped, lol! Towards the end of the ride I was able to get him into a sweet canter on his "bad" lead (left) from a sitting trot with just a single application of the right heel (er...and the spur attached to it). Sweet!
Hey, guess what; riding's become FUN again!
4 weeks ago
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