Oh Daniel... Today I got off work early enough and Mike was at his violin lesson, so.. I took Dan up to the arena for some groundwork. Because clearly he is getting bored and needs to be entertained. Plus, I've been meaning to do more groundwork anyways.
We got up there and did some pillar walks. He was mouthy but not too bad. I also had treats, so that sort of helped and sort of made it worse. I did try to get him to straddle the pole after our pillar walking but had run out of treats by then so Dan only took a few steps onto the pole before he just kept stepping sideways and not straddling it. Argh. I gave up though. It's hard without treats.
After that I put the lunge cavesson on and we started to lunge. He was a bit cheeky but we made a couple of laps. Jean had set up a whole bunch of jumps but nicely left me two circle spots. On my end of the arena she had a small crossrail set up on my blue blocks (not high standards). Dan was being a bit cheeky and almost ran into it a few times and ended up partially jumping it, so I asked him to jump it. And he did. But he got deep and really basculed and then landed and bucked and took off. I couldn't hold him. Sigh...
And then he ran around at a mad gallop for about 8 minutes. Like.. non-stop gallops. The sprints. He was on both leads and even got a few clean changes. Although one change was through a huge buck. Good gried. I eventually stopped trying and picked up some poop... and just... watched. I'm not sure why I didn't get video. Oh well. He finally came to me... blowing, and literally dripping sweat from his belly. His armpits were foamy with sweat. Ha ha. DUDE... that's on you though! I had nothing to do with that. He was quite proud of himself. And the good news is that the spirulina seems to be doing the trick. He was not coughing near as much today. I giggled that maybe he also took offense at being called not very fit by Abby at Dr. Kates. Although she did blame his cough for it. I blamed the 99 degrees with 85% humidity.
Anyways... sorry bubs, but... now you've got to do real work. So we trotted a fairly decent amount of time. He was lovely. He was reaching down and using his back and pretty square and straight! Yay! Good pony. We finished with some walk to trot to walk transitions to help him use his core and not be on the forehand. Although he didn't really look on the forehand in his trots.
Dan, Dan, Dan.... such a ridiculous beasty.
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