Truthful Tuesday

 

I think I've discovered a small hole in Al's training (aside from the obvious issues we've been dealing with). I don't lunge him a ton anymore, but with the cooler weather coming I imagine we will be doing a little more in the coming months. Most of the times I've lunged him I've had to work within some parameters of where jumps are set, so often our circle isn't particularly large. But he's always been respectful of the circle and is generally pretty easy to lunge. I set a new course yesterday and very specifically made it so I had a large area available for lunging. I opted to lunge him today rather than ride because the winds were winding like crazy. (Seriously, the wind around here lately is insane.) 

So I send him out on the circle, and it turns out, Al doesn't seem to know how to lunge on a big circle. He likes to bulge out towards his "safe" side of the ring, then tries (and frequently succeeds) to break in one specific area of the circle literally every time around, then finally rushes and falls in when he's near the "unsafe" side of the ring. I'm pretty sure I worked a lot harder than he did today trying to keep him going and entice him into using more space. We weren't overly successful if I'm being honest. Though I imagine the insane winds weren't helping our cause. He spent most of the session looking out of the ring and not where he was going. Also not at me. He's a terrible listener sometimes. I think next time we lunge I'll add some side reins to help with the bulge and maybe discourage the looking out. 

We did manage to have some success with transitions at the end, and I let that be our win for the day. I do take some solace in his being distracted and a less than stellar listener today because it shows me that he has hard days whether or not I'm in the saddle. Which doesn't fix anything obviously, but I think it's useful information. And makes me feel like less of the problem, which some days I just need that reinforced because I'm human. 

So that's today's confession, my horse doesn't know how to lunge in a larger space. And also, it remains to be seen if I know how to teach him this skill.