Bad Stops Can Be Bad For Your Health
I’ve be working really hard on the stops. Leo is just a superstar stopper from a trot now. I’m talkin’, I sit down and barely lift the reins and he tucks butt to nose. HOWEVER, at a canter…forget it! It’s like all that softness in the mouth just disappears.
So a few weeks ago, I decide to just do rundowns over and over until he decided to stop. We got through maybe four of those, when on the last one he just slammed down on all fours, mainly the front. I was sitting slightly twisted I think and MAN! It just destroyed my back. I was a hurtin’ unit for about four days. Ugh! Lesson learned.
Since that approach didn’t work, today I worked on just letting him canter for a while, but I kept him very very collected. This is one of those approachez I learned at a Vogt clinic. I attempted to stop maybe four times from a canter before I really asked for extreme collection, and all four stops were bad. He just trotted down and pulled against the bit. The last time, I had him canter the length of the arena three times and had him very collected. Then I turned him down the middle of the arena and sped up a little then sat back and said “whoa.” WOW!!!! It toooootally worked! He stooooooooooooooped! Woooohooooooo!
I had to hop off and let him be done for the day. It was so cool!
I’m a little bummed that winter is coming because I won’t have a place to really work on cantering and more speedy things. I hate that. I wish I had a big huge covered arena with the perfect dirt. Ooooh well. At least I have a great horse to ride, huh!!!
