Speedy, You da Man!

Do you remember that I mentioned the neighbor had guys using chainsaws to prune their massive tree on Sunday? No biggie if not. But yeah ... there was a guy in the tree hacking off branches and limbs for most of the morning.

Not my particular noisemaker, but you get the idea.

Sydney got to hit the trail as I knew riding in the arena with the snapping of branches and the snarling of a T-Rex wasn't going to give me a good dressage school.

Apparently others have met this same monster.

By the time I was done with Sydney, the weather had cleared and the arena was warm and sunny. The chainsaw monster didn't sound nearly as loud, and Speedy seemed oblivious to the whole thing anyway. I saddled him up and faced the noise.

Seriously. Speedy deserves some kind of noise tolerance award. How many dressage horses would happily school through the cracking of tree branches and the roar of a chainsaw? I don't think he ever even looked at the tree!  

Presented to ... Speedy G!

And to add to my pride, we finally were back on track. I kept his trot rhythm nice and slow, but in return, I insisted that his butt be engaged the whole time. There was no fussing on his part, okay, it was only minimal, but close to nothing. 

He was much more balanced with no tripping. We did lots of nice figure eights where he accepted the contact through the change of bend. When I asked for the right lead canter, he still popped his head up, but we were able to focus on maintaining a steady rhythm that was easy for him to hold which helped him to lighten off my left rein.

We also did lots of trot to canter to trot transitions which he got better at as we went on. I kept the work to under a half an hour as I didn't want him to get sore. I know myself how tough it is to do even a small amount of extra exercise. Now that I am once again asking him to use his butt correctly, I want him to do it happily.

I don't know how he felt about the work, but I was pretty dang happy!

You rock, Speedy G!