Things have been going well for Lic and I. We are cantering all over the place, and my consequence for her bucking seems to be very effective. She bucked twice this ride... for her, that's not bad at all! Once, I think she scraped her leg on some brush, and once, she was pissed because I was slowing her down out of a dead run. (I blame myself for that one in the first place for letting her get away from me.) But, here are some things we have accomplished in our past few rides:
-A pleasant canter and lope
-Rating the canter with my seat
-Half-halting out of a too-fast canter (almost a gallop, really) into a nice lope
-Backing using mainly alternating leg pressure with a supprotive rein
-Practicing/improving her jog
Best of all, she has learned that upward transitions without a command means work... I can actually feel her "thinking" about trotting, and changing her mind without my intervention. Also, we had a couple good spooks, but she is getting better at spooking in place, since my reaction to a bolt is an immediate one-rein stop and making her walk, calmly, past whatver spooked her several times. She still transitions downward without command, that will be the next thing I tackle, but for now, I'm happy working on one thing at a time. These are victories for me, too- I am still a relative newbie to riding and owning horses, so Licorice's improvements are reflections of improvement in my own riding and horsemanship.
I'm Outta Here
2 years ago
The bucking when transitioning downwards may mean something other than that she's "pissed" - I actually don't think that horses think that way - that's people stuff - but sometimes horses have trouble containing the energy of the higher gait - they have trouble repackaging the energy and the result is that the rear end goes up since the energy has to go somewhere. It's partly a matter of them learning how to bring their rear under them in the transition - you could help her by pre-cuing - to let her know what is coming - and by thinking of the downwards transition as if it were an upwards one - moving forwards into the lower gait rather than stopping the motion of the higher gait. Don't know if any of that makes sense to you!
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