Runaway Horse

I had a great ride with Walker today.  Not because he was good - more the opposite.  He was bad and we were able to work through it.

I expected him to feel a little defiant after a couple days off so we had a fairly extensive lunging session where we had it out as per the usual.

Because it was so warm outside, it did not take long to wear him out, and he was sweating bullets by the time I got on.  

At this point, a couple other riders joined us and Walker didn't put a foot out of place other than a couple attempts.  We were able to get some cantering done, as opposed to last week when we spent the whole time fighting, and so I only rode for a short time to praise him.

Unfortunately, he was sweaty, gross, and exhausted, so he was relatively sluggish and wouldn't go on the bit for long.  I am fine with this because the outdoors presents entirely different problems for us.  My main goal is to get him to be a conscientious citizen first and we'll work on all the rest later.  

I'm pretty happy with his overall improvement these past couple weeks, although he obviously continues to have meltdowns about how much he does not want to work outside (or at all).

Afterwards, I gave him a quick bath and took him out to graze.  He loves this one particular patch of grass which is not fenced in and since it was the middle of the afternoon, I decided to unclip his lead line and sprawl out in the grass beside him.  

This was all working relatively well until a truck pulling a trailer came barreling down the driveway (much too fast, given that it is a barn).  Walker took one look at the truck and galloped off around the barn with me chasing him like a lunatic.

Yeah, yeah, I know.  Bad life choices all around.

Luckily for me, Walker did exactly what I expected him to do.  He ran from one patch of grass to the next and continued grazing.  Once he established that the truck was in fact a truck and not a horse-eating monster, all was well in his horsey brain again.

I intelligently decided to clip the lead line back on and we went back to our patch of grass where we soaked up some sunshine.  I would have taken pictures, but we were too busy enjoying summer.