Yahoo buckeroo

Two days of riding this weekend:

Saturday was bright and windy, so I rode around the grassy areas to get Champagne used to the ground he’ll need to cross to get to the trails. Later we were joined by another woman and her horse, and she wanted to go look at the cows. Cows?

It turns out that just behind the barn property there is a farm with cows. So we rode over there and looked at the. dread. cows. I’m not sure if Champagne has ever seen a cow before, and these cows were very curious about the horses. They all ran to the fence. Champagne and Shay (the other horse) took turns walking a bit further, taking the lead, and then stopping and snorting and looking, all heads up. We progressed in kind of a leap frog fashion around the edge of the field, and had to walk by: A silo! A tractor! A greenhouse kind of thing with flapping fabric! All these things were semi-alarming, but nothing was as completely horrendous as the cows. On the way back we nearly bolted, but not quite.

When we got back to the barn, someone was pulling up with a horse in a trailer. Great excitement. Lots of rattley snorts and dancing about and circling. After the other horse was unloaded, Champagne clearly thought, “Looks like I’m going for a ride!” He tried really hard to get into the trailer. Very cute.

On Sunday, Ken rode for half an hour as a warm-up, and is progressing very fast. He is learning to get Champagne to pay attention to his legs, and is finding his balance much better. He actually got a bit sweaty from trotting. After that I decided to lunge Champagne to see if I could get a handle on the no-right-canter thing.

I had him circle right first, and when I asked for the canter, he really didn’t want to do it. I kept asking, and finally I cracked the whip behind him, and that got him into gear. But it wasn’t a smooth canter. It was full of bucks and leaps clear off the ground. I kept after him until he produced a very nice rapid canter steadily around me. Two good things: I was able to keep him from taking off to the other end of the ring, and I was able to keep myself centered in one spot while he did all the work. After success that way, we also worked the other way, and the only issue was that once cantering he wouldn’t drop back into the trot. We worked that a few times, and things went well.

I did ride him after that, but he was very hot, so we just trotted. I chickened out of asking for a canter either way. I know I should have, but truly I don’t want to ride those bucks. For a sleepy, calm guy, Champagne has a LOT of fire inside.