A great ground session with Gem

Wanted to ride, cold, windy and Gem was pretty spirited. Time was short so I decided to simply focus on the ground.

Really nice build of zone 3 yo-yos!

Worked on maintain canter circle with COD at every break of gait.

Lead by lip/ear/tail. All soft and very improved.

Started the session with herd sweetness. Took a few minutes to bring him around to me.

Sideways towards is really coming along nicely.

Spanish walk is better, but I need to step it up to get more improvement.

Nice ground session with some marked improvements!

An easy ride with my mares

Wanted to meet at Hidden Mesa, but Z couldn't handle the solo trailering. I planned to then bring Rain and help Z with her trailering concerns and decided to load Z first, then Rain. I futzed with that for another 20 minutes and finally loaded Rain first and Z second.

I wasn't pushing too hard, but the bottom line is that Z wasn't ready to do what I thought we'd do. She couldn't trailer alone or load first. It's just something we need to work on. Meanwhile, time got so short that we weren't going to make it.

Canceled on Deb and rode around the neighborhood instead. Walked the whole way. Z wanted to move but I insisted she stay calm and walk. We went about 4 miles, nothing big, but it was nice to be out.

Did some frog maintenance and White Lightening gel on both mares after the ride.

Stretching the rubber band

Best ride!! We went calmly and quietly up to the gate and then out and down the road. I could do this with him before, if I pushed him through his thresholds. Today, we went that far w/o violating his dignity by forcing him forward. He was fine and comfortable to go that distance. We did not hit a threshold actually, but I had all the dogs and didn't want to keep going with the whole dog pack. It was the perfect place to quit, anyway.

It only took a few rounds of canter back to the barn with some nice soft trot/canter circles to get him thinking it was ok to be alone with me off the property.

I trimmed him and soaked him afterwards.