Number Of Days...

...since Dino has given me the proverbial finger during warm-up:

1

Today was a completely punk-free day, and it was AWESOME. I'm trying to stick with the long and slow warm-up routine, and today I really made an effort to listen to Dino and only move on when he was ready to.

Nearly every good trainer will tell you that they key to truly mentally and physically warming up a horse is to vary their work using transitions, circles, changes of direction, etc. I've gotten reprimanded many times for just going around the outside track at a walk, trot, and canter as my warm-up.

But, today, for whatever reason, going around the outside track without any transitions and hardly any circles or directional changes just worked for us. I just let him go around until he started to offer a bit more pace all by himself, and then asked him for a little more forward or the next faster gait, worked there until he felt loose and happy to go forward, and then bumped him up again.

And he didn't say "No." or "Screw you," or "I don't think so," or "Make me."

We worked on a little shoulder-fore and some walk-trot transitions after that and called it a day. My boy done good, he deserved to quit early! Fingers crossed tomorrow goes just as well.

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