We Broke 60!

Talk about great timing this year! Most of the beautiful weather has so graciously fallen on the weekends just enough for me and Paxton to start getting back to work, and I think this year is going to be a good one!

Friday I was able to get out of work early to take advantage of the beautiful weather and bring Paxton over to a friend's place to ride in their arena. Thankfully I lunged him a bit before I rode, because someone was feeling their oats. To say the least, we got a workout, but not the most productive one we're had. Mostly, we just ran around to burn some energy, but I can say that we are building up our stamina...both Paxton's and mine, and we weren't completely drained at the end. It's our first 'real' ride of the season and it's probably the first time I feel that we're not behind in comparison to other horses in the area. As I covered before, not everyone has the ability to work their show horses year round in an indoor arena and that's where we're thankful to have great friends to let you use their facilities. After the first ride, you can really determine what it is that you really need to work on. Ours, is to become more flexible around the leg...and steering. With this in mind, I started to think about ways to help accomplish our new goal so that we're not so dependent on the rail in the arena either. Either way, there will be lots of circles in our future and many different arena exercises.

As I wasn't feeling all that great on Saturday, unfortunately I wasn't able to test this out but I did have something else in mind that we needed to work on, backing off the trailer. Currently we have to turn around to then leap off the back, which I don't mind, but if my plan is to sell Paxton in a year or two, I'd like the new owner to be able to feel absolutely comfortable and for him to be comfortable too when being asked to do something. I left the trailer hooked up from the day before, so my idea was to just get Paxton's front feet in first and then back him off and do that a couple times, but that didn't work out. He jumped right on and was ready to go for another ride. I was able to back him off a couple steps, but when we'd get to the back bit, he'd step off with one foot, get scared, and then jump back on, practically in my pocket. We tried this a couple times, but wasn't able to get my final goal of backing him off the trailer. I didn't think that it'd be done in one day, though it would have been nice. We ended on a good note by getting on and off the trailer just by turning around. The last thing that I want is for him to get sour about the trailer. Today we did work on backing out of the barn to simulate backing out the the trailer. Our barn is built on a cement slab and has a little bit of a lip before it goes down to the ground. Not much to really make a difference, but about 2 to 3 inches to start and apparently enough for Paxton to not like that idea either. We did start with my original plan of leading him in about half way and then backing out. Didn't have a problem with only the front feet, but the back feet we did run into a little bit of a snag. He'd act like he wanted to go up or crumple up sideways before deciding to trust me enough to move one foot back. We ran into the same problem or once one foot hit the ground, he'd want to jump right back in the barn, but after multiple attempts and countless 'good boys', we finally were able to back out of the barn. That was probably the most triumphant moment for the both of us and we celebrated by giving lots of treats and a lineament sponge down.

Letting Paxton relax for a bit, I decided that since the weekend was wrapping up, it'd be a good idea to bring him back over to my friends place to have one last ride. Trying to work on what my goal was from the night before, we started with the long lines and worked on flexion. Bending Paxton's neck and shoulders while going in a circle really helps open up his shoulders and will certainly help when I ride him to move around my leg, both bending towards me and away from me. We only worked on this for about 8 minutes at a walk and a trot so that he wasn't super tired when I got on. Applying some of these moves while I was riding, really helped him focus on more than just running around in a circle. We actually were able to have our heads on straight and be able to scratch the surface of accomplishing our goal, but progress is progress and I look forward to what's in store for us both!

If anyone has any tips or suggestions on how to back their horses out of the trailer for the first time, shoot them my way! I'm always open and looking for tips and tricks and good 'how to's' when it comes to that!