Playing at Liberty

On Sunday, TC was being a Very Good Boy (TM), but then he couldn't take it anymore and jumped into the air and pounced on his own shadow. I took that as a sign to get off the pony ride and turn him out in the ring to run. 

I'm getting a bit smarter in my not-quite-old age and sure enough, he absolutely needed a turnout. 

Please excuse how dirty he is, it is a sign that he
is living his best life (right??? lol)

It was pretty cool though. In the (distant) past, his turnouts were just him galloping around like mad, shrieking and generally making himself crazier and crazier until I catch him and bring him inside. Because of that, I haven't done too much turnout at the ranch arena because I don't want him chewing up the footing and getting himself worked up too much. If he wants to run, he has a half acre to do so in, preferably when I'm not watching. 

But this time, I just let him go because 1) the longe line that lives at the arena got wet and it's really unpleasant feeling and smelling, I'm going to order a new one and get a waterproof box to keep it in and 2) I wanted to stand around instead of having to parallel longe him because I was tired and had my tall boots on (which are hard to walk in). 

First step: roll a lot with a deranged look on your
face lol

Sometimes you just need to get into a fight with
your own tail

He rolled twice, once on each side, then stood there staring at me. I kind of gestured toward him and he rocked back on his hindquarters and galloped off bucking. It's so funny to watch him buck because it looks like he's trying to pick a fight with his tail and his tail is winning. 

There was so much more relaxation in his gallop than I've ever seen before. He seemed to effortlessly transition between and within gaits. He had so much body control. 

It was a lot more like the turnout he had after he got worked on by my bodyworker clinician, like he was seeing what his body could do vs just making himself crazy. He was really quite beautiful, despite being completely covered in sand and mud. 

This is how he starts galloping

Then he does this

After he was done, he came in to me and wanted to play. He played with my whip a bunch and then offered me his jambette work. I've been teaching him to do it for shoulder mobility and he's also just super into pawing. He is getting closer to being able to hold his right front leg straight out horizontal. It's straight out but it's a bit low. His left front he lifts really high but his knee is bent. I started to work on target training him to get his cannon bone to touch the handle of my whip, which he figured out on the right front but not on the left. 

He then rolled again and watched me while I filled in some of his divots. And then we went back to the barn (where I washed his tail, his tail needs like 5+ shampoos to get back to anything but brown, the water was so dark when I rinsed it lol). 

Wasn't paying attention to where he was going so
he ended up in the sand pile with my niece's toys

It was super cool to see all the different shapes he made with his body. He seems more comfortable in it every week as we work on all this new stuff. 

I'm probably going to add a liberty day here and there to work on his jambette and let him play on his own. I think he really enjoys it and it's no longer stressful to watch him run around now that he has so much body control!