A few days late, but this is my May update for Camaro.
Late April was good, and bad, in terms of rides. There were two days when work was being done in the indoor arena, and the only place to ride was the outdoor--briefly, for a few hours while the horses normally turned out in it were kept in so a few of us could ride in the early morning. First day of outdoor only went wonderful, except that I was under a tight time constraint and after longeing Camaro for about 15 minutes since it was the first time in the outdoor this year, I only had less than 10 minutes to ride. That ride was great: he was relaxed and stretchy, just as I had hoped.
The following day was rather a disaster. Rain was in the forecast, but it was just slightly misty when we set out to longe in the outdoor. And then came a lawnmower--or rather, a guy racing a zero-turn as fast as it could go up the side of the barn, towards the outdoor, apparently also trying to beat the rain. Camaro, understandably, in response to the noisy death machine zooming toward the fence did a full fledged Arabian episode of snorting and bucking and cantering like an idiot on the end of the longe line. I had just gotten him back into a more intelligent state when the clouds opened and the rain arrived. Rather than get my saddle and bridle soaked in order to ride, we aborted the riding plans for that day and dashed back to the barn. It was rather frustrating.
Two days later, however, back in the now improved indoor (overhead lighting!! no more spooky shadowy corners!!) we had one of our best rides so far, with Camaro on the bit, attentive, forward, and yet relaxed. He got extra treats that day.
May has been up and down. Although even the down days are better than most our good days last fall. There's improvement. The connection is nearly constant rather than hit and miss. He's less distractable and more focused. We've been working lately on developing different trots; there's warm up trot (oh yeah, we trot a lot more in warm up than we used to because he's not nearly as spooky as he used to be six months ago), there's our 'regular' trot, there's the stretchy trot (for a horse that liked to go with his nose up like a camel, having a stretchy trot on demand is awesome), and now there's what I call 'short trot' (slightly collected) and 'big trot' (more power than regular trot, this should become our extension months from now). We have multiple walks, too.
Some days we have a few honest to goodness leg-crossing steps of leg yield. Other days he wants to plow a diagonal path with his shoulder instead of cross his legs. Some days our turn on the forehand is smooth. Other days it's like prying his feet off the ground one by one. But overall, we are better than we were when Spring began. Halts are really getting square and almost entirely off my seat, hardly any rein involved now.
I think we're just about ready to begin focusing on canter.
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