Another Ride

In class on Tuesday we started to work on jumping and preparing to jump. I knew Iceman had no problem jumping but we needed to work on few things first before we went over anything. Brother Twitchell wanted us to be able to two-point over some ground poles first. Should not have been too difficult except that Iceman doesn't really trot. If anything he wants to lope EVERYWHERE ALL THE TIME! As class went on, I finally able to keep him at a walk for a little bit. As soon as I asked him to go a little faster, I felt like I lost his mind. He was connected with me at a walk, but when we went faster, I felt that he had left me behind. BUT! we made some improvements. I remembered that on the ground, he does a good job of matching my pace, so I tried to relax myself even more when I released pressure. This helped a lot.

We did the same exercise on Thursday, and we never did get a trot quite right. The walk became much easier and free moving. I believe that Iceman does not know the difference in energy when asking for a trot and a lope because as soon as I would bring up my energy he would jump into a lope. I need to work with him on the ground some more to make sure he can notice my energy changes, and I need to try to make my cues even smaller.