On Saturday, I introduced Checking Around. We started with Checking Around to the Tail & moved to Checking Around to the Hock on Monday & Thursday. Today, we Checked Around to the Saddle. Initially, Slate did surprisingly well with this. With his desire to muscle through things & pull on the halter, I expected more resistance. That resistance didn't arise until Thursday's session. So I spent a fair bit of time reiterating Flexing.
On Sunday, Rowdy's first ride took a bit longer than anticipated & we weren't left with much daylight for Slate's first ride. I expected Slate to be a bit more reactive than Rowdy & a rushed first ride or first ride at dusk wouldn't have been in his best interest, so I opted to hold off until my round pen helper was back today (Friday).
On Wednesday, Slate had his first dental. He had a bit of ETR (Exaggerated Transverse Ridging), sharp points, & a bottom right wolf tooth.
Today, we did Slate's first ride &, unbelievably, he was even less interested in loping than Rowdy. Truthfully, I expected Slate to have a bit too much forward motion under saddle. That wasn't the case. My husband was creating all of the energy he could & utilized the stick & string when my encouraging rein had little effect & we still couldn't get a lope. I knew we weren't going to have any luck in the round pen, so we moved to the arena in hopes a bit more space would help Slate a bit. It didn't help much, but we were able to get a few loping strides & quit there.
While some laziness is common in young horses to an extent, neither Slate nor Rowdy had many truly lazy tendencies on the ground. Slate, especially, has no issue loping while lunging. So just like with Rowdy, we'll take this next week to take a few steps back & improve our responsiveness on the ground even further.
Next week's update will be posted on Saturday.