Hammar and Ashley

Sorry for the lack of updates; I have done almost nothing with Nine except leading him from one pen to another and putting fly spray on him... But Hammar and Ashley have been being worked.

There is a loop of road that goes around Saddle Crater; I thought it was about 3 miles, but it takes Hammar 2 hours to trot it; I KNOW he's going more that 1.5 miles per hour... So I figure the loop must be more than 3 miles. Anyways, Ashley can do it alternating walk to trot back to walk every 20 seconds; Hammar can do it at a trot almost the whole way - I let him walk for 20 seconds every time he wanted to slow down but he only needed 3 breaks like this the whole way.

Yesterday Ashley got a fairly hard lesson in right leads. Some days she changes leads just fine, some days... well, not so fine. She very rarely does flying lead changes, but yesterday she was being especially tough. So I let her run for 1/2 mile or so, then we cantered some circles. It took many many tries before she got on her right lead. She only did it then, I think, because she had gotten SO frustrated with me... She bolted when I asked her to move in to a lope. BUT - she was on the right lead when she did it! So I kept her going in a circle to the right, and had her canter as long as she would. Then it was only about 500 tries again before she got the right lead again, hehe.

Today my mother in law and I rode out across the road. We had a very nice run through a cinder pit until Ashley broke the brush she was tied to while MiL took a pee. My MiL estimates we went at least 10 miles, and Ashley has really shown a huge improvement in her stamina. She still has energy left over, even though she has been worked fairly hard (for her) twice this week. Hammar was being rather callus in that he kept scraping my knee on Ash's flank, and ignoring my leg cues. But he showed his worth on the cinder pit, running like the wind! He has barely broken a sweat this entire week, even through the unknown length trot, and even through the cinder run he had to catch his breath (he is rarely worked hard enough to be breathing hard - he just doesn't run out of wind!) he still was only sweaty under the saddle. Ashley has - both days - has sweat on all parts of her body, but she is feeling great and looking awesome! Her hindquarters are really filling out, finally. She's half quarter horse but you'd never know it looking at pictures of her minuscule hindquarters!

Starting Tuesday Elayne goes back to the sitter's and I can start back up again.