Today there was a great trail ride for a three year old I'm training. The whole ride was a couple of hours and the terrain was vast. Large and small rocks to climb, trees and cactus to manuver around and through. So many washes between the mountains, saddles, and hills to climb and work down through, some even had water in them. The horse had a big drink about half way around the ride, after we made it into the large pool of water in the one wash. The biggest problem this arena ridden three year old had was stepping into the water and watching closely to a narrow part of the trail that he slipped a hind foot off of for one step. This was a great ride for him because it was a good break from teaching head possittion and body controlled manuevers. With out a lot of training to do on a trail ride because the horse stayed quiet and under perfect control throughout, we just focused on moving forward.
Forward motion is seldom worked on in the arena exercises with a lot of specific intent. Most of the time we might ask for very specific speeds and getting better transitions from one speed to another, or a change of the horse's gate from a trot back to a walk, etc. Yet what would we be missing in our horse if we did not have the forward speed controls.
This is a very broad subject matter like many in my past blogs. I am looking forward to uncovering the specifics of all this in future post. Feel free to add questions in the comment boxes in each post. We will keep moving forward.
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