Foward, Straight, don't stop!

So today we pretty much worked on keeping Kieran moving forward and in a straight line, without letting him get bored. Once he decides something is boring, he stops paying attention and we get him just stumbling over trot poles or tripping over himself or drifting around the ring. Mostly that means I have to not zone out because when I do, he does.

Anyway, we started the lesson and Kieran was ready to go. I asked him to trot, he wanted to canter, when I finally let him canter, he gave a happy "whee!" kick. I guess it was the drop in the temperature but it was like riding a different horse! LOL.

That said, even when he was frisky, I felt like I was right there with him the whole time, instead of slightly out of sync like I used to feel sometimes.

Today, Jessica had set up a set of four trot poles at E and two crossrails (one over by B, one at X). One of the crossrails was really open and inviting, the other was set up on two barrels laying on the ground so it was a bit more "solid" looking. We started with the open crossrail and she just wanted us to get a forward trot going and for me to point Kieran at the fence and allow him to go forward. She was like, "I don't care what your position over this looks like, you can follow him well enough over a fence this small that you can just grab mane and go, what we want is for him to just come straight at the fence with a steady, forward rhythm, and not to stop after the fence." So we just worked on that and then about the third or fourth time instead of just trotting over, he kind of hopped over and cantered away nicely. He got lots of praise and pats and a long walk break for that.

Then we went and did the more "solid-looking" crossrail. And after the long walk break, she had us start by cantering around the ring to get him forward again, then when we came around the turn to the fence, to come back to a trot with the idea that he'd stay forward.

Well...he didn't, really. I think that confused him, "slow down, wait, keep moving out? Why'd I slow down, then?" So we went back to just trotting and pushing him forward and that one we got him to hop over it and canter out a stride so that was really good too.

A lot of my lessons lately have been about working on me, this lesson was pretty much all about teaching Kieran something. :)