I was going to ride JR at home and was doing the pre flight check up.\u00a0 He did his version of the bucking bronco.\u00a0 He has no suspension when he bucks.\u00a0 It just looks like a rocking chair canter with the head down!\u00a0 This went on for a while.\u00a0 Then the wind came up and the rain clouds approached.\u00a0 I decided this was not the time for valor!\u00a0 We loaded up and went over to Pine Dell.<\/p>\n
Well, the arena was being used for turn out for a weanling and older friend.\u00a0 So, we rode outside after all.\u00a0 He was nice and pyched up, but we managed to have a beautiful ride up and back in the 40 acre hay field.\u00a0 He did a smooth fox trot the entire time!\u00a0 He had been switching back and forth between the running walk and the fox trot.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Then, one of my friends told me that she was having a lesson with Jenny at 4:00 and would I like to join it.!\u00a0 whooppee.\u00a0 Jenny was late, but husband Tony was there to start us out.\u00a0 I complained about JR’s stop at the canter.\u00a0 It takes him too long to stop after I ask.\u00a0 Tony asked me if I wanted to get a REALLY REALLY good …almost reining horse stop.\u00a0 I said, Yes!.<\/p>\n
Passenger riding is the answer.\u00a0 Since I don’t have a great stop at the trot either, we elected to do this at a trot.<\/p>\n
Passenger riding.\u00a0 In an arena.\u00a0 You do not hang on to the reins.\u00a0 You don’t tell the horse where to go with leg aides.\u00a0 His job is to travel nicely in one direction next to the wall…that’s when I get to ask with my body for him to stop.<\/p>\n
Traveling nicely along the wall is not the horse’s idea.\u00a0 They like to go in small circles…get next to other horses in the arena…visit places they like to stop at ..like the middle.\u00a0 My job is to keep JR trotting…even in the tight little circles.<\/p>\n
In the arena is the weanling (loose), Tony is training a spooky horse and two other women riding.\u00a0 Did I mention that JR was fascinated with the weanling.\u00a0 He kept trying to visit the weanling.<\/p>\n
All set.\u00a0 I let the reins loose and get set…GO! WELL…all JR wanted to do was chase the weanling!\u00a0 We zipped along towards the weanling and the weanling took off…and so did JR!\u00a0 Forget the passenger riding, our game turned into a Cutting Horse Game.\u00a0 I let out my famous quiet scream and soon the cutting horse game came to a stop.\u00a0 Tony decided that my passenger game needed to continue without the weanling.\u00a0 The weanling was delivered back to his stall.<\/p>\n
I have a COW HORSE!\u00a0 JR hooked onto that weanling like he wanted to eat him for dinner.\u00a0 I’ve been wondering how JR would do at a cow clinic and now I KNOW!<\/p>\n
Well, the passenger game continued.\u00a0 We tried really hard to run into Tony and the spooky horse.\u00a0 I have to urge JR to go faster when we turn into the middle, which really spooked the spooky horse.\u00a0 Tony did appreciate this.\u00a0 It helped the spooky horse to learn that nothing was going to eat him.\u00a0 Then we decided to go help the cantering horse.\u00a0 We were fox trotting ..heads even… with the horse that was cantering.\u00a0 The cantering horse was on the wall and JR and I were on the inside.\u00a0 We looked like synchronized swimming there for a while.\u00a0 The end of the arena came…we both made the turn and JR cut her off on the far long wall.\u00a0 But, no matter!\u00a0 I apologized to everyone before we started.<\/p>\n
We did some more nice little circles and fast turns here and there and finally JR discovered that being on the wall was the nicest place to be.\u00a0 I asked him to stop several times and he didn’t listen, so he got pushed to go faster….but we did stay in the fox trot almost the entire time this went on!\u00a0 Finally, his body told him to listen to my body and he stopped.\u00a0 We stayed stopped for about 5 minutes.\u00a0 That’s the release that teaches!<\/p>\n
We got to do this once more and it didn’t take near as long …nor near as many quick little turns for him until he was floating along the wall and then came to a stop when my body told him.\u00a0 This time the stop was almost reining horse stop!<\/p>\n
The lesson with Jenny was pretty nice.\u00a0 We fox trotted nicely.He cantered nicely.\u00a0 We pretended to do flying lead changes.\u00a0 Jenny complimented us at the end of the lesson!<\/p>\n
I had a bunch of fun with JR today.\u00a0 He is SO Much Fun to ride now that he has the gait back!!!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I was going to ride JR at home and was doing the pre flight check up.\u00a0 He did his version of the bucking bronco.\u00a0 He has no suspension when he bucks.\u00a0 It just looks like a rocking chair canter with the head down!\u00a0 This went on for a while.\u00a0 Then the wind came up and the rain clouds approached.\u00a0 I decided this was not the time for valor!\u00a0 We loaded up and went over to Pine Dell. Well, the arena was being used for turn out for a weanling and…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[122,4,41,18],"class_list":["post-764","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-jr","tag-jr","tag-missouri-fox-trotter","tag-slide-stop","tag-tony-vaught"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/764","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=764"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/764\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":768,"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/764\/revisions\/768"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}