Gia - session 39 - Trotting in the big ring!

I worked with Gia on Wednesday this week.  Since she has been doing so well with her riding so far, I decided to forgo the lunging warm up and see what happens.  Katie got her groomed and tacked up with no problems.  Once in the round pen, I walked her up to the step stool and mounted, like she was any other horse who had been riding forever.  She did not offer to do anything bad at all!  Then I had Katie come in the round pen with the grain.  I proceeded to work on her trot sets, rewarding her with grain once she had gotten the desired number of steps.  She was very ready to go, but not in a bad way.  She has been pretty sluggish up til now, and without the warm up, she was not sluggish, but she wasn't naughty either.  Since she was excited to trot, I had to remind her to stay at a walk until I was ready.  For this work, I would ask her to walk, then immediately release my restraining rein aids once she did walk.  I would count how many steps she kept the walk in a row.  My goal was to get 5 steps in a row and then ask for trot.  If she tried to trot before I got to five, then I asked her to walk, and started the count over.  She was starting to understand that she could't go until I told her to, but that I would eventually ask her to trot if she was patient.  When I did ask for the trot, it was no problem to get 15 steps to start with.  I worked her up to a full lap in the round pen in each direction, with reminders about walking in between.  Once I got her to that point, I hopped off and brought her into the arena.

In the arena, I started out letting her check everything out again at a walk.  She was less hesitant this time, but still curious to touch a lot of things.  When we had been around the arena once in each direction, I decided she was ready to try some trot in the arena.  It's always a little nerve racking asking a horse for more speed in a larger area, especially when you don't know what they are going to do (I'll probably talk about this again when I finally ask her to canter in the near future ☺).  But Gia was perfectly quiet.  She did think about spooking a couple of times, but it was very slight, and most people probably wouldn't have even noticed!  At the trot, I did three sets in each direction, each time going for a desired number of steps.  Gia had no trouble keeping the trot for the most part, although I did have to remind her a few times.  A lot of times, if a horse is sluggish in the round pen, they open up a bit in a larger space like the arena, and that is pretty much how Gia felt.  She has a bit more room to move, and she definitely moved more freely.  She is still on the slow side (I definitely don't mind that now, and I can always improve on that later).  I would much rather have a horse that is too slow than too fast, any day, especially one as big as Gia!  I let her finish on her trot sets for the day.  We won't have access to the round pen for a while (we have a new horse on the farm, and that is our quarantine area), but I think she is ready to stay in the arena anyway.  Time will tell ...