 |
| Not a coincidence that his left lead was best when there wasn't a way for me to pull on the left rein lol |
On Saturday, I rode TC with my neck rope. The TCS gives me no ability to stay with him when he surges, so I've been meaning to put my neck strap on. But that lives in my car and so I decided to use the neck rope instead.
He wanted to stretch down so I ended up dropping the reins and feeling like I could actually ride in the thing! I decided to work up to bridleless riding this fall.
Sunday we went on the trails, but Monday I grabbed my pivo just in case we could get some fun video of us trying out our bridleless riding. I didn't know how far we'd get but thought it'd be fun!
 |
| He spent basically the entire time stretching at the trot |
Turns out we got really far! I started out by just tying my reins in a knot and having them right there for me to grab. But I never grabbed them, so I ended up removing his bridle and then trotting around. He stretched way down and seemed to enjoy it!
After that, he started offering me everything he does at liberty! We work at liberty on occasion and he loves it, he plays with different behaviors and I shape the cue after clicking for the behavior a few times. We have funny games we play and I've been very slowly shaping a piaffe-like movement as well.
He offered me turns on the forehand, rein back (which has been terrible with the bridle, interesting!), and jambette.
After that, we picked up the canter for about a half circle in each direction! I was starting to run out of time at that point and decided to just let us be done there since we'd gotten way further than I thought we would on our first dedicated day of riding bridleless!
 |
| Best boy, he had so much fun! |
I'm so pleasantly surprised by how it went! It was such a blast and I felt super confident on him, even in only the TCS and after not a huge amount of work.
Hopefully we get our saddle back soon so we can go back to normal work, but I think I definitely want to develop this stuff with him. It was a great challenge to be even clearer with my aids and intention and he thought it was great too.
In addition, this is making me want to get him a side pull, even just to trail ride in. I've always wanted to have something where I had really good brakes but I think we're beyond needing that! We'll see where we end up going with all of this, either way, we're having fun.
