Monday, November 16, 2009

More Loping

The weekend weather held up nicely. It was clear and in the high 60's. We went out Saturday afternoon and after working our exercises in the alfalfa field we headed off down the canal. Jessie is improving a little every time. Her lope is getting slower and more easy to control. She's learning to bend more as well.

We also did some loping at the big square (the area we have marked out at a housing development that hasn't been started on yet) Her left lead was pretty ugly and we had to do it twice, but the right lead was very good. We rode for two plus hours getting home just before sunset and the temperature was dropping fast.

Sunday we stayed out back and played with the big ball, rope, cones, and a little jump. When Ranae and I first started riding together we had seen a Craig Cameron exercise where you trot a circle side-by-side and toss a baton back and forth. Ranae and I hadn't yet done that on Dusty and Jessie so I got a two foot piece of PVC and we gave it a try. It's the kind of exercise that forces you to focus on something else (tossing the baton) instead of your riding. It was fun. We were even able to do it at the canter which was quite the thing to get those two to lope side-by-side. We probably were out there for a couple of hours just messing around and having fun. Jessie was getting better at kicking the ball and she even had a pretty good jump over a low rail.

No comments: