Cooling Off a Bit
It is a little cooler. Not great, but with the breeze, certainly tolerable. So, as evening started to roll in, I brought Tucker in from the pasture and saddled him up.
This took a while as I put on his Cashel but armor. It is in two pieces and needs to be tied under the saddle and onto the bridle. I did not put the face cover on with it, but used a set of ear protectors instead. I do need to sort out the bug armor pieces as I have three sets--deals on eBay. One of them is a different style in front and it doesn't work quite as well as the others. But for today, the unmatched piece were just fine.
My main focus with Tucker for now is just to get him moving off my leg. He tends to challenge "forward" at times, but usually, once I tune him up with a few transitions, he's good. What I want to develop is an immediate forward response to my leg. As long as he's not sore anywhere, it should be fixed pretty quickly. The flies definitely do not help as he is very distracted by them, so the Bug Armor is an essential.
We worked for about 20 minutes or so, walk, trot and canter. I finished up riding a version of a training level test just to put everything together. Had it been in the show arena we would not have scored particularly well. His frame was a bit erratic and he resisted the right canter depart. His free walk was lovely, though, as was the stretchy trot on the long rein which I suppose some judges would say was "on the forehand." But he was actually rounding down through the bit, so I was quite satisfied.
After we finished our ride, I handing out carrots all around. I'm putting Chance on the agenda for tomorrow, weather permitting.
Done riding, I headed over to the pool for a nice swim. I only did 15 laps today--20 yesterday--and two rounds on the Lazy River. It was getting a bit late and as the sun began to dip it actually felt cool.
All in all, it was a good day at Follywoods and beyond.
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Sounds like a good ride - and a swim after is always nice too!
ReplyDeleteIt does sound like you had a good ride and probably with more work Tucker will be where you want him. The bug armor is a good idea to keep the distractions low.
ReplyDeleteThe swim sure sounds like a nice way to end the day. I think you'll be in the pool a lot this coming weekend, it's supposed to get hot again. I can hardly wait...ugh.
How interesting - that Tucker's free walk and stretchy trot were so good. For Tetley I feel that we need to be very well warmed up in that particular ride and generally in good shape. Tetley is probably in better shape than Tucker so why is Tucker better at it? Or, giggle, is it me?
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