On to the longeline

At the walk, moving out on the circle nicely.

 Today I took Rory out to the arena and put him on the longe line for the first time.  He's been very good about walking in a circle around me, and going out on that circle on a lead line.  It was time to make the circle bigger.  I let him loose to get the excess energy out while I set up the camera to take pictures, then hooked up the longe line.  Rory was really good, and went out onto the bigger circle easily.  I had to push him out at the same place on every circle for the first few, then he got better at staying out.  Rory has broken into trot on the lead line circles in the past, so I asked him to trot on the longe today.  Trot wasn't any problem for him.  The transition back to walk was good, but the halt was a little harder on the bigger circle.  I had to use the wall to help a couple of times.  Rory wasn't perfect, stopping when he shouldn't, and trying to canter off once, but I was very happy with his first longe line lesson.

Trot on the right rein.

On Monday (Jan 3rd) I saddled Rory up again and took him for a walk in the arena.  He didn't seem to notice the saddle and did everything I asked him to do.  There were a couple of horses whinnying outside and Rory considered having a little tantrum at one point.  He stopped, whinnied and bounced his front feet as if he were going to rear.  I told him he was not going to do that and quickly pre-empted the meltdown by turning him in a small circle several times, then going to a few steps of backing up, and turning on the forehand before continuing the walk.  We did do a little bit of trot in hand.  The first few steps got a little quick and Rory tossed his head and tried to push ahead of me, but I was expecting him to try something and halted him immediately, backed him up and tried again.  The second time went well and we ended the session there.

I am noticing that while Rory will often get a little nervous and act as if he's about to have a meltdown it's fairly easy for me to distract him.  Once he's back to work the impending meltdown is quickly forgotten.  If there is a specific thing that he's unsure about he needs to stop, look and think about whatever it is for a moment.  Several of his "I'm leaving now" episodes occured when he needed to look at something and I pushed him to keep doing whatever exercise we were working on.  If I give him the time to look he's good to go back to work.  This is important to know as many horses will grow more nervous and need to leave if simply allowed to stop and look at something they find scary.  The need to leave all too often starts with a very sudden spin which can unseat a rider before the horse bolts away.  In Rory's case the need to leave often starts with a buck as well as the sudden change of direction.  Not something I want to be concerned about when I start riding him.