Ride Recap

Katai and I had a great ride tonight but both of us worked pretty hard. She was full of energy (my fault) and spring sass (not my fault) so I started her off on the lunge. I had her do a good amount of trot and canter in both directions and at first she wasn't listening to me AT ALL which is unique to her mood with our spring weather. She bucked, kicked out, and spooked a few times but mostly was just really good.

CRAZY weather for February in MN!!

She did enough work that I didn't plan to do much with her under saddle but once I hopped on she still seemed ready to burst at the seams with energy so we ended up doing ALOT of trotting. She was really moving nicely and was really being good, she just needed to move.

I did ask her for a bit of lateral work but she was so fizzed up that it was tough to get her to sit back and do it right. I got a good try in either direction and called it. It's almost always worth giving her the benefit of the doubt rather than pushing her and this is so unusual for her recently that I just put the blame on the excess energy and rewarded her for the try.

He played like this for a few minutes :)

We also did a few rounds through the cavalettis and I was impressed that she did them nicely since sometimes running for her means lots of very small quick steps which don't go well with cavalettis set for a lengthened stride :)

After LOTS of trotting (with a walk break in-between) I asked for a canter transition and got a decently calm one. I did a minimal amount of canter and then tried the other direction and again got almost no drama. More trot, more fizzy pony and then I called it. She'd done a really good job and I certainly didn't want to run her into the ground, just drain some energy.