An interesting week for Rowdy, to say the least! He definitely doesn't live up to his name.
On Saturday, I introduced Checking Around. We started with Checking Around to the Tail & moved to Checking Around to the Hock on Sunday. Monday, we Checked Around to the Saddle. In a similar fashion to leading by the feet, Rowdy had little resistance & did well.
On Sunday, Rowdy had his first ride. It was fairly successful in most areas. I expected Rowdy to have a nice ride that was calm yet responsive in speed. He sure proved me wrong. Just like Krimson, Rowdy had little interest in loping. We were able to get a few half laps in the round pen & I left it at that so as not to tire him out & cause him to really want to shut down.
On Monday, we remained in the round pen (without a helper). I opted just to walk & trot & see if he would find his flow a bit better. Getting a trot even was pretty tough. He was drawn to the spot where we had stopped & dismounted the day before. On Tuesday, I asked for a lope, but he was not interested, so we moved out into the arena. Even in the arena, it was a struggle. He either wanted to hole up in one of the corners or seek comfort by my husband's horses standing near the fence line. No amount of over & under'ing him could convince him to go much faster. He had no interest in kicking out at my rein like Krimson did; he was just unphased. I did finally get him to lope down the long side of the arena & a couple of times & quit him there.
On Wednesday, Rowdy had his first dental. He had some molar caps that needed to be removed on both sides. He also had the typical sharp points with no wolf teeth found at this time. He should be much more comfortable.
Thursday, we started the ride in the round pen & quickly moved to the arena. Loping was nearly impossible & when asked, he would completely stop. He had too many magnets in the arena & with little response to the over/under, I decided to head out into the pasture where he could have plenty of space to free up & travel in a straight line. This is something that I've never done or had to do. Even in the pasture, he was not interested in moving out & really just wanted to head back to the place. Once headed back for home, we got some decent loping to happen. Once back on the place, we continued heading east down the lane for the gravel road. The great news is that he had little to no spook. He questioned going over the culverts but took little convincing to walk over it. We put on several miles between the round pen, arena, pasture, & gravel roads.
Following the ride, he was hosed off for the first time & did quite well with it.
While this is nice in the sense that he doesn't overreact to all the energy I'm trying to create on top of him, without forward motion, we're limited in what we can get done. So with the stickiness that has come up under saddle, I'm going to go back & spend this next week in the round pen improving his responsiveness to my cues, specifically my voice. While I wouldn't have minded seeing a bit more forward energy out of Rowdy, I didn't have the trouble with round penning that I had with Krimson initially. With Krimson, it was all I could do to get him to lope during the round-penning lessons. Both, Rowdy & Slate, could lope several laps during round penning. However, it seems that something is getting lost in translation once I'm in the saddle.
Next week's update will be posted on Saturday.