Field work for Star and Alyssa, arena work for Colonel

Thursday I had a good time with Star, and an interesting time with Colonel.

The neighbors are drilling a new well, which means there is a giant tower, and lots of heavy equipment and trucks and goings on. I really dont blame star for being nervous about this one. So I was pretty lenient when she wanted to get pretty far back from it and sidepass all the way past it. In the middle of her sidepassing through the field (sorry Robert) she also spooked at a sprouting blackberry bush. I would have considered that beneath my notice, given the GIANT scary tower, but Star is very thorough.

I decided to fight her about going through the puddles in the curvy section of the field. If she doesn't want to trot through them, fine, I respect that, but she's going to damn well walk through them if I tell her to. Now Star does understand the indirect reins. When I payed attention to my aids she was actually pretty good about going through the puddles.

Once we got comfortable-ish, we actually did do some canter work on the scary side of the field. Just the last half, away from the scary tower, and I was pretty pleased with us both. We also did some really nice trotting. It was smooth, controlled, dare I say round?

Later I saw Alyssa and Niki thinking about going into the field. I wanted to get there before any major decisions were made, so I sent Star trotting towards the big scary tower. Star had also spotted Niki, so she was just fine trotting towards it. I walked her past it and then we picked up a canter. Robert says that from where he was watching out his window we got a pretty impressive hand gallop. It was fun, but irritatingly out of control.

Alyssa and I wound up walking up the west end of the arena and just around the corner. Alyssa decided to quit while she was ahead, so she got off and led Niki the rest of the way around the field. I took Star back home.

I decided to avoid having to deal with Colonel and the scary tower of doom, so we rode in the arena. He is very sluggish in the arena, he hangs on my hands a lot more in the arena than he did in the field. The work we did in the field about not hanging on my hands apparently doesn't translate to the arena. Bummer. We did some circles and some trotting. He was relatively calm, but I really had to fight for all but the most basic requests. He steers fine. He goes forward reasonably well. Slowing down, stopping, turning without leaning precariously into the turn, all of those were fought for, and not all of them achieved. I absolutely could not get any downward transitions without him sticking his nose out and pulling on the reins.

I tried to canter him, that went poorly. Low slung head, pulling, leaning into his turns. I swear I could have leaned my shoulders to the inside a bit more and knocked us both over. Of course his solution to being out of balance was to go faster. I decided we werent going to get anywhere with that, and we went back to working on a calm trot.

Still not sure what to do about all this.