It was a beautiful day today and I decided to try working with Rory outside again. The ice that was inside the paddock gate has melted so Totyo was unlikely to be sliding into it again. And I decided to put full gear on Rory and see if the side reins helped him to stay focused.
Normally I longe Rory for a few minutes and run through the walk, trot, out and whoa commands before hooking up the side reins, but today I snapped them onto his bit right away. The side reins are still long enough that they don't put pressure on the bit while Rory is carrying his head normally - I wasn't asking him to do anything strenuous by snapping them on right away. My strategy worked very well. Rory had one big jump and head toss when he first trotted, and when he felt the side reins he subsided in surprise and I quickly asked him to continue trotting before he fell back to walk. There was one other little jump, but it was hardly worth noting. As usual whoa was a bit iffy at the beginning when he was busy looking around at all the distractions. I had to enforce the command a couple of times and then he was listening quite well.
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| Rory looking at the other horses after the work. |
In the trot Rory looked like he was going to bolt off several times but I kept the trot slower than usual and Rory behaved himself. Having him listening to the "easy" command, and my body language half halts while he kept trotting was great. Those are more subtle commands and could have been missed with all the distractions around. Totyo did some whinnying and some running back and forth. For the most part Rory ignored his antics. I was really pleased with how well he was paying attention, and I kept the longe session very short (under ten minutes). Rory was also very consistent about lifting his back and having a nice relaxed neck today. We did a bit of steering practice on each rein to finish up. Lots of praise for the little man today!
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