Another Day, Another Story

I'll admit I was eager to go to the barn tonight to try out all the great suggestions given to me by friends on how to deal with my lazy horse. The horse was in the middle of his hay, and not enthused about leaving it, but instead of my usual indulgent attitude, he got a backhanded pop with the lead rope for resisting my efforts to lead him from his stall. He got the same about two more times as we walked down the aisle and he'd dive towards the tempting bales of hay.

Got him bridled with no trouble, yes, I had his lead rope tied around his barrel, but again, he accepted the bit without putting any pressure on the rope, so that's good!

I got him standing by the mounting block and rewarded him with the peppermint (so thereby reinforcing the standing still is good philosophy), he never even made a move to back up or swing his butt away. I was impressed because there was an OTTB being lunged to our left, and a 3 yr old Paint mare being lunged to the right of us, and we were sort of in the middle between two very energetic horses running in circles, lol!

Tonight I wore my spurs AND had my 4 foot long fiberglass whip. Just having the whip was enough to keep him inspired for a while, and I don't know if it was just the whip & spurs, or the change in the weather, or the energy of the other two horses in the arena, but he was a WILD MAN, yeehooo! Trotting, breaking into a canter un-asked for, just frisky as could be! I did pop him a few times (not whippings or beatings, nobody needs to call the cops on me) & kept him going, the only time we stopped was when I asked him to because I had to catch my breath, lol!

We cantered both directions many times, did some collected trotting, some extended trotting, even got him to side-pass over a pole on the ground, both directions! All in all a VERY enjoyable evening. I'll admit some of our "issues" are due to MY laziness, so I'll try now to be more proactive, riding with both the whip and spurs. Maybe in a few days I can try bridling him w/o the rope as well.

He wasn't too traumatized by this new direction, as he still managed to goober up my hair with slobber when I was untacking him, lol!