Tuck Rides Again

What Gorgeous Weather!

I took a long walk today. If Google Earth is right, it was probably around 3 miles or a bit longer. I sneaked out of the front of the house so Peppercorn did not see me and headed for the farm road. This track takes me through the Christmas tree farm, along the NJ Turnpike, around the back and then up along the woods again. I was really tired about 3/4 of the way along, but got my second wind and finished up in fine style.

I came back home, rested up for a bit and then headed out to the barn.

It was Tucker's turn to work again today. We spent a good 20 minutes just trotting.  I did not ask for a lot of  "on the bit" work mostly because he is not really ready for it. Despite that, we did shoulder-in, haunches-in, leg yield, and half pass. I do need to do more haunches-in as he is not quite as flexible in the back end.

I didn't push it today, however. It's something to work on as he gets more fit.

After a walk break, we did some canter work. This was mostly a big figure 8 with twenty meter circles at each end and a change of lead through the trot in the center. Again, interesting. His left lead canter tended to fall apart just before the downward transition for some reason. On the last two tries, I made the angle of the line before the change a little less sharp and pushed the canter into the line a little more. That did the trick and we had a nice through the trot change to the right lead.

To cool him out, we went into the woods taking the little mini-trail directly behind my property. It's essentially just a little loop out and then back, taking all of 10 minutes at the most. He did try to turn down the trail that heads deeper into the woods, but I opted not to go and we headed home.

A nice grooming and a treat of carrots finished up his day.

I did a few more chores out there and then came back in to blog and collapse.