Ground Control

 gone by since I last lunged her. But after the first day, she took to it well and was very accepting of the rope.

Since lunging on a small circle can get boring and be hard on a horse’s limbs, I used the entire ring, constantly moving her up and down to keep her brain and body working. I added in trot poles one day to further challenge her. When she wanted to get distracted or a little naughty, these gave her something to think about and kept her paying attention to where her feet were.

In just a week I saw a huge improvement, not only in her behaviour on the lunge and on the ground, but also in her way of going. The first day on the lunge line she could barely hold a canter, which proved to me that I do far too much in the saddle to keep her going and we need to work on developing her own engine. At the end of the week, she could comfortably canter both ways consistently and without too much prompting from me. We even went on daily walks around the property and she was rewarded for her good behaviour with grazing privileges. Another bonus to all of this — my confidence level on the ground with her improved immensely and continues to do so.

There is a silver lining to everything, and even though it was unfortunate to not be able to ride for a week, we made the best of it and I truly think it benefited both Fire and me immensely. I did manage to figure out what the bumps were, but you will have to wait for the next blog to find that out.