Last Saturday and Sunday

Yeah, I'm a bad blogger. No posts for a whole week. Fortunately, that doesn't mean that my horse hasn't been ridden in a whole week, just that I've been negligent on the blogging front.

Last Saturday, Ziggy's dad rode Saga for me while I was out of town. You can read his synopsis of his ride over at Twenty Dollar Horse. And he sent me a text message saying he's going to steal my saddle. I know you're reading this, R, and I have a tracking device on that saddle. Just so's ya know. :)

FuzzyPony rode Saga on Sunday. She sent me a synopsis of her ride, which I'm posting here, in blue:

Saga and I started out with my usual warm-up routine. This consists of walking around the full arena, both directions (normally I only go around once but since Saga and I are new to each other I went twice). Then trotted the same pattern. This give the horse a chance to see all the ‘scarey things’ at a slow pace (so they don’t jump out of their skins at the rake leaning against the wall next to the arena, etc). At the trot I tried to keep him as forward as possible though he kept trying to A) fall into the arena or B) stiffen horribly in the corners and anticipate canter. The use of my inside leg exacerbated the stiffening and canter thoughts. So we went back to the walk and did some circles in the corners with me working hard to keep my leg aids soft and steady. We continued to circle in a corner until he went around it at least semi-relaxed. It would take 5 to 10 circles per corner though. He still wanted to stiffen so I took him to the center of the arena and we worked on turn-on-the-forehand. He was confused at first but started figuring it out. After that I went back to circles in the corners and, with much concentration, managed to get him to be more or less relaxed through all four corners with out having to circle in the same corner several times. ;-) After that we did some more forward trotting and quit on that. We worked for a good 45-50 minutes and he soaked the saddle pad completely. All in all we had a good ride/workout. At least from my perspective; Saga might have other thoughts.

It's always nice to hear that your horse is bad about the same things for someone else as he is for you, but what I found was interesting was Fuzzypony's report that he was worse to the left. The right has always been the hard side for him in the past. But hey, it will be nice when he's better to both sides!