Wednesday, September 24, 2008

oh my thighs!

Well, last night we lunged in the side reins for about 10 minutes. Why? Well, Star is gaining weight back nicely and her top line is improving, but her neck is still too thin and looks out of place with the rest of her. BIG QH body, skinny neck, BIG Jug QH head. Not a pretty picture if you were looking at her conformation. So we are using the side reins to get her to use her neck muscles more to bulk up that neck and top line. Then we worked on the canter ..again.
FYI to Teacher Deb, only 350 more laps to go. as we did about 20/30 last night. hooray.
So, here is my issue, she will canter left lead until the cows come home, right lead not so much, she will putter out and sometimes just stop whilst going to the right on the outside wall.
So, I turned my ball cap around brim to the back, got out the bat, as I left my WHIP in the barn, and worked worked worked. The bat has zero affect on big butt mare-i-tude. Note to self, must bring DQ Whip for next session. ugh... I kicked, I kissed, I batted her bee-hind hard, I used every seat muscle I could muster and still refusal. She can canter sideways down that outside wall, while that is a formidable skill, it is not what I had asked for.
So we did some fabulous laps going left until she was puffing like a smoker. Then we worked on showmanship for another 20 minutes with a loose girth and no bat. :) She learns so quickly, she is very easy to teach. Love that about her, she is a sponge.
But the rhythm is getting better, but she is still anticipating too much, so I think another lesson is in order to fix my aids, and fix her refusal of going right.
Maybe spurs are next? She'll love that..... Time to get out the big guns.

1 comment:

Tuffy Horse said...

Jocelyn,

One trick ot help with neck muscles is to always feed at ground level. This makes the hors stretch down more and really puts a nice rounding to the crest and poll. Feed your grain and hay are ground level, in a tub or a pan.
Be sure when using side reins that you don't use them for over ten minutes in a fixed positions. You can also target "trouble" spots in the neck by gently bending the head around to the stirrup fender, then releasing and bending the other direction.


Tuffy Horse