This week, we continued to work on Hickory's Round Penning, Desensitizing, Yielding the HQ & FQ, Flexing, Backing, Lunging Stages 1 & 2, Sending, & Circle Driving.
I'm really happy with how he's doing with his round penning, once he switches to thinking mode after the first couple of laps, he's got a nice quiet trot & almost a western pleasure lope. This was also the first week that he finally offered to move off at a nice walk, both during the round penning & during our Lunging exercises.
On Wednesday with the way the weather was setting up for the end of the week/weekend, I opted to mimick saddling with my surcingle. He did very well with the saddle pad & having the surcingle tossed on. He stood to be cinched up & when I asked him to walk off, he did so without much issue.he did put on minor rodeo when first asked to trot, but soon figured out that wasn't necessary. He W/T/L with no issue from that point on.
With the poor weather, I pushed off the official saddling until Monday, which should go smoothly pending his reaction to the back cinch, & we'll do his first ride Friday evening.
He's been catching pretty nicely & voluntarily walks up to say hi when I'm running the hose to fill Hero's tub.
Today, we received the first bit of snow for the season.
Next week, we'll move from the surcingle to the saddle on Monday with a first ride on Friday as it sounds like Randy should be home with the truck in time.
- Lexy Nuesch
Next week's update will be posted on Friday.
I do my best to get these updates posted in a timely manner, but it's not uncommon for me to be outside until after dark, depending on the weather, my schedule, & who gets worked when so updates will sometimes be posted quite late in the evening. Don't be alarmed if you don't see your update right away. In rare cases, I may have to push them until the next morning, but I'll reach out & let you know if so.
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