09/28/2023
I don't know what stars have aligned, or what secret is in our sauce... But Zero and I have been 🤌🤞 lately!
I always love him, he's always bebe angel (well mostly lol) but lately it seems like everything we do together is just working!
Now that he's in his field himself, he's actually way happier. He has friends he can interact with over the fence, and he's not getting hurt so we're not missing any exercise sessions due to that. I believe horses should have friends but he had become anxious, herdbound, distant and distracted in with other horses and is much much happier with friends thru fences.
We've been working on fitness, both under saddle and on the ground. He's been taught tons of groundwork in his life but I didn't work it often as he just wasn't in to it and I would need to add way to much pressure to get a reaction. Lately though he's been a star and killing his groundwork at liberty! Which is great as I've been using many groundwork exercises to build up his hind end 🔚 we've been doing a lot of loose ring lunging, working on stretching long and low and coming back the me any time he feels his energy get high.
With these skills we had a blast free lunging the other day. Goober quietly would jump out the high sides and come right back to me to help bring his energy down 😀
Yesterday I put a jump out, just to change it up under saddle and he was amazing! I've been working on riding with a lighter seat, and not overriding my jumps or pushing for my distances so hard. This resulted in every jump being super smooth, me being able to see my distances 4 strides out every time, and Zero being the absolute best star ✨ we then finished with cooling out by riding outside. Even as the horses in the field ran back and forth, he stayed quiet and happily engaged with our ride.
One last ride tonight and then I'm away for 4 days at a course... Can't wait to come home to see his cute little face and hear his little hello whinny 😀