Originally posted Jan 22, 2019
Unfortunately, weather has really put a damper on my desire to ride so far this year. Between rain, wind, cold temperatures, limited daylight hours and my excessively busy schedule, finding time to ride has been difficult. Today I decided to brave the elements and squeeze in a ride, despite whipping winds, temperatures hovering around freezing, and an overly saturated arena.
I started Ozzy out with some basic groundwork on the lunge. I like to use groundwork to focus the mind on a variety of tasks and give the horse a chance to warm up without the rider. Ozzy is really quite level headed and is rarely over excited, however today’s winds and his lack of work made him a bit more “up.” We worked on yielding his hindquarters (particularly on the left) before allowing him to trot, to keep him from trotting/cantering mindlessly in a circle from his over excitement. He settled in quickly and was soon ready to work.
After mounting, we worked exclusively in the walk for a good portion of our warm up, really working to achieve an active stretch and transitioning between different amounts of rein contact. Stretching has been a difficult skill for Ozzy to learn, I believe in part due to his conformation. We continued working on the stretch in the trot. Circle right felt fairly balanced. He was using his back and shoulder well. Circle left is certainly our weak direction though. He tends to get tight in the jaw, particularly when riding sharper turns. I worked on staying up and open through my upper body during turns, but I also played around with using outside aids to move the outside shoulder more laterally around the turns (some were more successful than others.) The best left turns were the ones that followed right turns where he would soften his neck and jaw, similar to a figure pattern.