Riding with the Sister

Today, Bogey showed no sign of the hesitation or lameness so we may be clear on that front. This morning I did some light groundwork with him loosening up his shoulders, hindquarters and beginning to teach him to bend and maneuver his ribs. This afternoon my sister and I went riding up town at the fairgrounds.

It was a very nice day, the only issue was the bugs - but that was remedied with a heavy dosing of fly spray. My sister took her pony, Nancy, out and lunged her then got on and rode around.

On the Bogey front I got on and worked on bending at the poll and bringing his break over rearwards and finally worked on forward and maintaining the lope. Bogey's bad habit is breaking down on me while loping, which is a combination of him looking for every excuse for "whoa" and the lack of stamina to lope throughout a show class. To remedy this I simply asked Bogey to lope and cruised around the arena. I let him go wherever he wanted, with the only requirement to continue loping. I think we made significant progress in this area and there were only minor breakdowns.

Hopefully, that issue will also be behind us, but I'm going to have to continue that exercise to insure that "forward" is maintained in-spite of the collection exercises. He's too smart that he looks for every excuse to be lazy, and this is his biggest excuse.