Wednesday Recap.

Well, yesterday I had a fabulous lesson on Gus and a nice ground driving session with Gringo.

Starting with Gringo ... Well, he ended up being lame on the lunge yesterday so instead of wasting a day and not doing anything, I opted to get out the long lines and work on ground driving. He was such a trooper yesterday. I had another "proud momma" moment with him. Despite not being ground driven since his lesson like three weeks ago, he did really well. I definitely want to keep working on this as it's a really good tool to have in our box.

My lesson on Gus went well too. We were both exhausted but such is life. I started off with Gus on the lunge, as usual. And he was a total loony - not necessarily typical Gus, but the antics were (the buck/fart/bolt thing). He looked to be fairly sound-moving, but had just the slightest hitch on the left front. We did eventually work out of that though.

Under saddle work consisted of circles. Lots and lots of circles. We had cones set up on a 20m circle in the middle of the arena. Cones were spaced out at 15m and 10m (B, E and on both sides of the centerline). Objective? Smaller circle, more collected, bendy trot (or canter). Larger circle, move forward, freer trot (or canter).

We had some very nice trot moments undersaddle. The canter work was nice too - we had a real nice 15m canter on the RL - the 20m circle Gus didn't try hard enough and the 10m was too difficult. On the LL, Gus was pretty obedient the whole time ... but when he was done, he was DONE. There is absolutely no reserve left in that boy's tank.

We ended the lesson with both him and I being exhausted. Gus was puffing like there's no tomorrow, along with being drenched on his shoulders & chest. I'm glad I clipped him this fall ... cause after a ride like yesterday, there was no way he would've otherwise dried off. As it was, I did end up putting him back outside after just 30min under coolers.