Spring Break Part 2

Part one can be seen here: Spring Break Part 1.

Bogey started to feel better around Wednesday, but there is always that question every horse owner has, "Is He/She still lame?" It's almost if we look hard enough we can still see a little limp or a strange turn of the hoof. Finally on Thursday, I felt as if I was making up a bit of the soreness and called my BHF for some riding time.

My BHF has the ultimate horse playground. She has the coolest indoor arena. It is gorgeous inside and has a great sound system, lights, motivational posters/paintings and the coolest ground equipment to work with. She has giant horse balls, a wooden bridge, a trail gate made out of PVC, (How inventive of her husband!), and ground poles abound. It is so much fun to do groundwork there, ride and have fun.

I took Bogey over to her house on Friday afternoon and he was feeling good. She said that she thought he looked so good, he's a little portly, but when you are almost 16.3 and such a long bodied horse a little weight on you makes you look less like an gangly two year old. Bogey by the way is a fit/thinner 1313 lbs. I wonder what he is at right now with his minor hay belly and chub.

Bogey and I went into her arena and did a bit of lunging as he was a bit amp-ed up. I follow Clinton Anderson's methods of lunging for respect as I don't like to make Bogey do mindless circles over and over again, as he was a lunge liner as a yearling and does have some arthritis and degeneration in his hocks and rear pasterns.

After the lunging my BHF came out with her new gelding Truman. (He is a baby-doll faced 4 year old AQHA that is the sweetest boy ever.) She did the same lunge work with him and then showed me her groundwork that she does.

She puts Truman into small trot circles. She has him do this quite close to her as she can bump up his momentum, his belly and work on his face. Truman has a tendency to lower his head way too much and become heavy on the forehand. The groundwork exercise is a simple way to manuver his body and control all of his body parts as a great warm up. It also doesn't take much space, so if you are pressed for location (or have too much mud around! ;D) you can still do the exercise at a slow controlled pace. She does this both directions and then moves him up to a controlled lope. While doing the circles if he is looking like he is holding himself up and moving correctly she lets out the line and allows him to move into a larger/straighter circle. This exercise helps with lift and some drive, but mostly with control of the feet and strength in crossing over and deepening the hock. Also, this exercise can easily be modified to your desire.

I'll see if I can get a video of Bogey and I showing this exercise sometime this summer. (I need to invest in a good video camera).

I'll go through our riding exercises and fun in the next post. :D

-Amy