From racing to riding... the training diary of an off the track Standardbred

Saturday, March 26, 2011

Back in Work!

The snow has finally cleared which means we are back in work!

I have kept the riding fun and entertaining. Jet has a lot of excess energy built up! What does that mean? Trail rides. Lots of trail rides. We both absolutely love the trails and would rather be out there then stuck going in little circles in the ring. We have done three trail rides so far, and each one has been better than the one before it.

Three things that summarize the trail rides would be: bucking, bulging, and no brakes. Each day, these all improve. In fact, we ever did out first ever flying lead change! We were cantering in a field, he wanted to go home and I wanted to circle so I picked him up on the outside and asked for the change and surprisingly, he gave it to me! I was SO proud! After that, we called it a day.

We have had our fair share of fights as well. There is this one corner where he always bulges, bucks, hops, or does something. It gets quite interesting....but I have won the battle! After going by it a few times now, he is a good boy.

Today Mary-Kate and I rode him in the ring. He definitely needs a lot of work! With time everything will be put back together and I will get into more detail about exactly what's going on later. We both rode for about 30 minutes on him, totaling up to an hour. I warmed him up, she cooled him out. In the middle, we both did lots of trot work and short canters. Its great to be back in the saddle!

In case you didn't notice, I changed the design of the blog a bit as well as the top picture! And here it is again:
My Handsome man<3

Well, that's it for now!

-Emily and Jet