Oct 20 - Transitions

Rode Chester today with a saddle in class. He gets really dominant when I'm putting the saddle on him and he likes to hold his breath a lot and I have to tighten his saddle like three times before I finally actually can get on him. Brother Twitchell had us work on our transitions today in class. When I say transitions I mean the time period when I am getting Chester to go from a walk to a trot or a trot to lope and vice versa. I practiced walking five strides and then trotting five strides and go back to a walk for another five strides. He has gotten so much better about picking up my energy and starts trotting with very little pressure given to him.

I also wanted to see if he would lope for me. So I started out do small phases and adding small amounts of pressure as I went. By doing this I found out that he has like 4 different trotting speeds! He trots so fast that at times I have difficulty posting so I either just two-point it try to somewhat sit it. I quickly realized that slow and small amounts of pressure to get him to lope wasn't going to work. I had to use a TON of pressure and a TON of energy to finally get him to lope. He finally did lope for a couple of strides or so and I was happy with that. But I know that is definitely something that I will continously need to work on and play with him it.