Whoa Walker

Despite the title of this post (whose meaning will become apparent soon enough), I actually had a good ride today.  After Wednesday's weird lesson with all the horses, I decided to give Walker the day off on Thursday - and also because sometimes we both need a little break.  On Friday I went out to the barn with the friend that took the pictures of Walker and me.  It was a pretty sad day for her because our barn owner is selling the horse that she leases.  It's time for her to retire, and so it was my friend's last day with her.  For whatever reason, the barn was packed - there were three girls besides the two of us, and a girl in the middle trying to lunge her horse.  I had my back massaged earlier in the day (I have some back problems), and so my back was a little tender.  I loped Walker along the long end of the arena about three times, could feel that he was a bit tense (i.e. he might throw a buck), and decided on not ruining my recently fixed back.  Instead, Walker and I jogged for maybe 10 minutes and then walked for probably 45!  Oh well.  It is nice every so often to just have an easy ride.

I feel like this picture accurately describes my relationship with my horse - both of us staring at each other wondering what the other is doing

Today I went out to the barn with the intention of actually getting some work done.  I was pretty happy with Walker, but he was definitely feeling his wheaties!  When I asked him to lope, he was even cantering fast on his good side (which he rarely does), and he even did one of those 45 degree angle barrel racing turns around the arena.  Apparently he was in a rush to get nowhere!

Because I wasn't able to get him to do some of the nice circles we've been doing lately (mostly because he was too excited to run), I decided to change my strategy.  I did some rollbacks which we do a lot lately to get him listening to me, and then, to switch things up, I got him to do rollbacks on the opposite long end of the arena.  You see, I consistently do rollbacks on one end of the arena (Walker and I are both creatures of habit), and Walker is so smart that he has figured out every time I ask him to turn on the rail that I want him to lope off.  In a way, this is a bad thing, and at one point today, I asked him to turn on the rail (simply jogging), and he shot off into a lope.  I would hate for him to run off on someone just because they asked him to turn on the rail, so I moved us to the other end of the arena.  This worked pretty nicely actually, and I also started adding a second end.  I would get Walker to do rollbacks but on an L-shape (loping one long end and then the next short end before doubling back).  I realized today that Walker (like most horses) has ends of the arena that he barrels down as opposed to others, and switching my L-shape rollbacks to different ends of the arena in different combinations really helped me gain control on ALL the ends of the arena.

I also realized that some of his bad habits at the lope are my fault.  At one point, I got him loping nicely on his bad side (which rarely happens), but the minute we rounded the bend towards the end where he shoots off like a rocket, he dropped his head (as if to get behind the bit) and took off.  I realized that most of the time, I ride his mouth down that end because he goes too fast.  Instead, today I made sure to let him run as fast as he wanted and gave him lots of rein.  When I did so, he continued to go at his fast pace, but he didn't drop his head and get behind the bit like he normally does.  He was not nearly as tense going down that end as he normally is (he usually feels like a coiled spring ready to buck me to my grave), and so I'm hoping that with a little more rein and trust, we will be able to get over his tendencies - tendencies acquired from my own bad habits.

Walker pushing me over during our photo shoot - he's likes to hog the spotlight

Finally, on a more humorous note, because I was doing all these rollbacks, I kept yelling "whoa" every two or three seconds.  My barn owner was down at the barn with her husband and heard me.  All of a sudden she came running up the hill.  I stopped loping Walker, and she said "Are you ok?".  Confused, I responded, "Yes... Are you?"  Apparently, she heard me yelling "whoa" so many times and assumed that Walker had run off with me and that I was yelling for help!  It was a pretty funny misunderstanding, but not altogether an impossible conclusion!