Week 1

So Week 1 of Walker's bootcamp turned out to be a bust.  Walker has a tendency to fall apart when he's not being worked, and unfortunately he got 5 days off while I was away at a wedding.  When I got back, I pretty much had to throw my lesson plans out the window.  He clearly was not in the mood to work.  For the first two days, he was fussy (especially at the lope - which has always been our biggest problem), and he was throwing his head all around and slamming on the breaks as if to say, "Go ahead.  Drive that spur into me one more time, I dare you!"  Even though Wednesday he got worked twice - once in the afternoon and again in the evening during our group lesson - he still wasn't completely back to his regular self.  Unfortunately, we got a torrential downpour here yesterday and so I couldn't make it to the barn to ride him, and today I have to go back home again for the weekend.  I think I will stop out before I leave for a quick ride, but I won't be able to ride him again until Sunday :S

How Walker and I looked this week (and most weeks)

That being said, I tried out a different bit on him all week - including during our lesson - and I have a lot of faith that this may do the trick to cure some of his more regular problems.  Even my instructor made a comment about how much better he was (which was kind, considering he tried to bolt back to the other horses when we were doing a pattern).  I do have a lot of faith in this new bit though and I think I will give it some more thorough use.  Once Walker is back to being worked consistently, I will really be able to see if it is having an effect.  If so, I will be pretty proud of myself because I picked this bit all on my own without anyone's help.  Thank god for my extensive research abilities!

Other than that, I think I am going to include a standing martingale in his tack - at least for the meantime.  Walker has reared my instructor off before, and I have to admit that the rearing scares me way more than the bucking.  He has never reared with me, but he does like to throw his head around when he's unimpressed with something.  For instance, when I was trying to jog the pattern during our lesson and I wanted him to turn away from the group who was watching us, he threw his head up and started to fight with me because he wanted to go back to his friends.  My instructor wanted me to use a lot of leg to get him over, but he was throwing his head around so bad that I could feel him considering his little hops that he does as a precursor to rearing.  I think that the standing martingale will simply make me feel better when we get into those types of arguments.  I have no problem using my spurs on him, but I don't want the result to be him rearing in the air - or worse, falling back down on top of me.  While he's never reared with me forever, I'd like to keep it that way.