Making Progress
A little more than a week ago we visited trainer and friend Matt Sheridan in Tehachapi. Matt is an all around good hand and very knowledgeable in the hackamore. I was getting frustrated with the hackamore and considering just using my snaffle. It seemed I just could not get control of Scratch with the hackamore.
Matt walked me through some of the techniques. Bumping instead of pulling and using my legs more were great suggestions. He told me I needed to release quicker too.
One other excellent suggestion was to ride Scratch in the halter. "Tie the reins like you would the hackamore, don't worry if they are straight, and just see what happens.", he said.
On the first ride I put him through some basic exercises. I was much more comfortable using the halter. He seemed more comfortable in it too. Then asked him to lope. He needed a bit of encouragement, but off we went. What a grand feeling! We loped around the medium arena and when I asked for the whoa he set his back feet under him and stopped on a dime.
And, there was another plus since my last post. We have access to two arenas. Both places were very nice to let me bring Scratch in, but there were things in each one. One was an old roping arena and had the chute and boxes. The other had a bunch of obstacles. Now we'll get to obstacles soon enough, but when Scratch gets going, I did not want to worry about him running into something. I talked to Helen McKee at our local Rancho Rio Stables and she loved that I was participating in the VHTC. She's letting me use the round pens and arenas. The are very nice. A variety of sizes and we get to practice with a lot of other horses around. I shot some video today too. I am getting ready to edit it and hope to have something posted soon.
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