Finally Some Time for Challenges

Well, I have certainly had some fun in my last ditch effort to get some points in this mini contest. It was hot last night, but I saddled up my beauteous Curly and found some fairly flat yard area for trotting a figure eight. You are right, Denise, this is not our usual style, and I figured this would have a fairly big learning curve for us. But, we caught on to it pretty quickly! First, I walked AhD through the figure eight several times. When I thought he “got” the pattern, I asked for a trot, and WOW! Four times through at a nice trot with no breaks. Unbelievable! Then I thought, hmmm, that was easy…what else can I do…and eyed the stone wall along the big maples. I had the grand idea to have AhD jump it, but when I got down on the road side, it looked WAY bigger than it did on the yard side, so I nixed that idea. However, I spied this log lying along the pasture fence and dragged it up into the yard, killing two birds with one stone. AhD was a bit concerned with me dragging the log at first, but I was too busy getting a workout so I ignored him. By the time I was exhausted (like ten steps into it), AhD was bored with the log. He gave me a nice jump our first time through which surprised the heck out of me, because I ask him to walk over things like this on the trail. He didn’t jump as well on the second attempt, and on the third attempt he thought maybe he would run down the driveway afterwards, because, hey, I was asking him for more energy and running down the driveway sure qualifies as “more energy,” doesn’t it?

But I will say that overall, his attitude lately has been WONDERFUL. In addition, because I finally had the opportunity to ride four days in a row (just about unheard of in my world), I was able to implement something I saw on a DVD, “repeat lessons three consecutive days.” By the way, I still have a few more days to try to get my stomach muscles in shape for that “five minute bareback trot.” Is anyone else going to attempt that one??? I need some support here, fellow RACers!