"Let 'er buck"

The title of this post is "let 'er buck" which is a phrase from the movie Hidalgo which Frank T. Hopkins (played by Viggo Mortensen) always yells to Hidalgo when he wants him to go faster.  In light of Walker's recent energy burst lately, I felt that it was an appropriate post title!

Today it was supposed to rain, so luckily for me we ended up cancelling another Orientation event that was outside.  When I woke up this morning, it was beautiful, and because we had already cancelled the event, I got to go see my boy instead!

Yesterday I lunged Walker before riding him, but today I just hopped on.  We sort of reversed the order that we normally do things.  Normally I will walk him for awhile to get warmed up, jog for awhile, and then we will finish our ride with a canter.  Today, however, Walker was itching to run again (they were kept inside because of the impending thunderstorm that never came), and so after about two steps of the walk, he burst into a canter.  Instead of pulling him back like I normally do, I followed suit with yesterday and just let him run.  It was wonderful.  We cantered all over the place!  We cantered large and we cantered circles and we even cantered diagonally down the arena.  I pretty much just offered a bit of direction every so often.  One time we almost hit the mounting block, and another time we slid through the puddle at the back of the arena almost into the fence.  Walker was loving it.  He also kept splashing around in the puddle, and I wanted him to have fun so I let him do it.

Ironically, as I mentioned yesterday, our issues with the frantic corner are gone.  When Walker has energy, he doesn`t want to stop cantering so he just makes the turn like normal and keeps going.  Another interesting thing I noticed is that if I signal that I want him to turn 1-2 strides before frantic corner, it seems to be enough warning for him to start his turn.  I`m wondering if part of the problem was that he brought himself too deep into the corner, making the turn too difficult, and he simply needed a little more direction from me.  I will have to test out that theory when his energy level goes down (if it ever does!).

Although our days in the outdoor arena are numbered and I should be trying to ink out as much work as I can before the cold days set in, it`s nice to have days like this where both of you get to have fun.  After all, it`s the weekend, and work is for the weekdays!

♥