My Dad and uncle dropped by the farm today to say hi to Val. They pulled up a couple of chairs outside the long side of the arena to watch our session. Val said - "What the hell is going on? No one's ever sat
there before! Why are they talking so loud?!" And proceeded to act very silly for much of our ride, including a bit of head tossing and crow hopping. Dad and my uncle are both hard of hearing which apparently means they have to talk four times as loud. And my uncle jumped up and down from his seat, made big gestures and generally did distracting things as he doesn't know any better. Chalk it up to a training opportunity :)
We utilized halts and turns on the forehand to get Val's focus back on our work, and ended up doing some very nice trotting with Val reaching and working over his back. Not sustained, but more than we've achieved before. Treats were flowing after the ride, you can be sure ;)
My training plan for the time being is contact, contact, contact. Since this could get pretty boring as a non-stop post topic, I'm going to limit myself to brief updates and photos until we have a handle on it. In the meantime be on the lookout for a series based on an article called
Behind the Vertical by Erik Herbermann.
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| stepping under :) |
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| What a GOOD BOY! |
