Today Arty and I made the five minute trek up the road with crazy OTTB mare (who in general, wasn't very crazy) to go ride in a neighbour's field. They also own the big field we were hacking in yesterday, which is when we found this little one. Its intended usage is as a storage place for one of their wagons, but it can serve as a make shift riding arena when desperate. Our current real outdoor sand ring isn't good for anything more than walking right now, so I was more than pleased to find this little... gem isn't quite the right word. I asked Santa for an indoor arena for Christmas, but I'm afraid he didn't listen ;) Unfortunately our makeshift grass ring isn't quite good enough to allow more than maybe five pony canter strides, but that's okay. As this was the first time said pony had cantered in maybe a month/month and a half, I think that was all he could handle at a time. Even with limited canter it still went something like this:
"Arty, do you want to canter"
"Do you really have to ask?"
"Arty,Canter not gallop..."
"There's a difference?"
Arty finally trots
"Pony, you are not a standardbred."
"tehehe, that's what you think!"
He then proceeded to get a little crazed and rushy. This was disappointing, as he'd been so calm up untill this point. We did some trot-halt-trot work with maybe two strides of slow western jog instead of trot and then gradually worked our way up to a proper trot. By the end of this, we managed to get three trot-halts with only three half halts to get there! I was so impressed.
Unfortunately, the lack of canterable space afforded us little time to work on framing in the canter, which is frustrating as that's where he needs it the most. Ah well. All's well that ends well!
Crazy OTTB Mare
Cute Fuzzy Pony
that is the cutest picture in the world of you and Arty.
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