Saturday Groundwork

Today was a grand November day! Hunting is in full swing, so not a woodsy trail riding day but still a good day for working on some of those ground work items assigned by Denise.
Here we are practicing our leading skills. I was amused to see that Ah-D thought gaiting was more appropriate to keep up with my jog than trotting. I could hear the hoofbeats. Downhill gait, uphill trot. He matched my pace and backed up like a dream. I was so pleased, and I let him know.
Standing square! A miracle has occured!These are our Groupies. They stand as absolutely close to us as they can get and followed us up and down their fence line as we practiced. It's nice to have admirers. :)

Look at this lovely trot. When we started out, he did a nice quiet walk, but when I asked for the trot I got some sass. Asking for the canter resulted in Ah-D flying around, not nicely collected. Blowing off some energy! So, I put the kibosh on that. We sssllloowwed it down and relaxed, and I got some lovely walks and easy trots from him. We are a work in progress. I think our biggest challenge is self-loading because although Ah-D loads really well, I always lead him on. I decided to use apples as bait up at the front of the trailer. He did a lot of thinking about what I wanted him to do, so I was very pleased with that.
I love it when he relaxes and listens. What a great day we had working on some basics!