A week of early mornings to beat the heat (which looks to be the theme for the next month) & continued progress for Cactus!
This week, we continued to ride in & out of the arena.
Inside the arena, we've been spending a lot of time at the trot & lope working on softening & having Cactus be accepting of pressure during downward transitions & stopping.
I'd like to see Cactus slow down a bit in the trot & lope for what you'll be utilizing him for, but he seems to naturally be a bit more forward & bigger-strided.
Outside of the arena, we rode in the neighbor's pasture, crossing the creek, crossing fallen trees, etc. The only spook I've seen from Cactus was when we surprised a duck in the creek that flew up. Even then, it was a pretty minuscule jump in place.
Today, we had a coyote that followed us during part of our ride through the hay meadow!
Zakai's incident kept us from making it down to the WMA again this week, unfortunately.
Next week, we'll continue riding out & about, introduce a few obstacles, & continue getting Cactus more compliant & soft at all gaits.
I'll be heading back to Pierce the weekend of July 30 for 2-3 days of trimming, lessons, & hopefully, some additional riding & plan to fill the trailer with a few client horses. Would you be interested in having Cactus & Zakai tag along for the experience?
Next week's update will be posted Friday.
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