But I don't think it worked.
I was determined to do some work on his canter today because it's pretty shocking. My sister describes it as "a show-jumping canter", its more of a battle of wills between him and me, he tries to tank off, I try and half-halt him and we sort of roar around the arena with periods of good bits and periods where it feels like I'm riding a rhino. Who's on a homicidal charge.
It started okay, I gave him a big groom so he was all bored and raring to go when I got on, I let him walk around for a bit, before convincing him that walk-halt-walk transitions were fun. The first three went walk-halt-rear-walk-halt-piaffe-buck, but I eventually got an acceptable if not perfect transition. We proceeded on to trot and he seemed determined to show off his lengthened trot almost continuously. I then made my first mistake of the evening (first mistake of the day was having gherkins for breakfast. Then microwave popcorn for lunch) which was to let him trot over a pole. For a normal horse, this would be no big deal, but Tally felt that this pole was a 6ft liverpool and he needed to throw himself over in daring style because it planned to eat him.
I then began work on canter. The first canter was nice. The second canter had the most beautiful transition but then he grabbed the bit in his teeth and tore down the long side and motorbiked around the end before I could convince him to stop. This pattern continued for quite some time, as Tally got progressively more hyped up until I dug out a flash noseband from the depths of my tackroom and tied his mouth shut.
This was fine until I asked him to trot, it resulted in one of his more impressive recent tantrums during which he managed to simultaneously buck sideways while moving forward in a semi-gallop. Looking like a stunt double in a Western movie, I directed him to the corner he'd be least likely to jump and replaced my ass back into the saddle. I eventually convinced a half-decent canter out of him and gave up. Twenty minutes of hillwork then followed, through the whole time, he didn't even break a sweat.
He goes for a big beach gallop on Monday. And I mean big. Horricks Park is on Wednesday and he needs to have blown out the bugs up his ass by then.
"I do not look like a complete arse in this photo"
Playing with his toy. It didn't take him that long to get the swede off, sadly
I was determined to do some work on his canter today because it's pretty shocking. My sister describes it as "a show-jumping canter", its more of a battle of wills between him and me, he tries to tank off, I try and half-halt him and we sort of roar around the arena with periods of good bits and periods where it feels like I'm riding a rhino. Who's on a homicidal charge.
It started okay, I gave him a big groom so he was all bored and raring to go when I got on, I let him walk around for a bit, before convincing him that walk-halt-walk transitions were fun. The first three went walk-halt-rear-walk-halt-piaffe-buck, but I eventually got an acceptable if not perfect transition. We proceeded on to trot and he seemed determined to show off his lengthened trot almost continuously. I then made my first mistake of the evening (first mistake of the day was having gherkins for breakfast. Then microwave popcorn for lunch) which was to let him trot over a pole. For a normal horse, this would be no big deal, but Tally felt that this pole was a 6ft liverpool and he needed to throw himself over in daring style because it planned to eat him.
I then began work on canter. The first canter was nice. The second canter had the most beautiful transition but then he grabbed the bit in his teeth and tore down the long side and motorbiked around the end before I could convince him to stop. This pattern continued for quite some time, as Tally got progressively more hyped up until I dug out a flash noseband from the depths of my tackroom and tied his mouth shut.
This was fine until I asked him to trot, it resulted in one of his more impressive recent tantrums during which he managed to simultaneously buck sideways while moving forward in a semi-gallop. Looking like a stunt double in a Western movie, I directed him to the corner he'd be least likely to jump and replaced my ass back into the saddle. I eventually convinced a half-decent canter out of him and gave up. Twenty minutes of hillwork then followed, through the whole time, he didn't even break a sweat.
He goes for a big beach gallop on Monday. And I mean big. Horricks Park is on Wednesday and he needs to have blown out the bugs up his ass by then.
"I do not look like a complete arse in this photo"
Playing with his toy. It didn't take him that long to get the swede off, sadly
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