Since it was raining every Wednesday and Thursday for 3 weeks (my normal midweek riding days) and I was out of town for 2 weekends my horses didn't get ridden very much. So I decided some lunging in the arena-off lead-would be a good idea. Zoe usually is pretty good. She's the one I've lunged the most over the years. Her biggest downfall is food. The feeders for the pastures are on the outside of the arena so food spills over to the arena side and it all looks so inviting. Once she discovers that I mean business about not stopping to eat, she does fine at lunging. She stays on the rail most of the time. I usually have her mom, Skippy, in there at the same time. Skippy can be eating while Zoe lunges around the arena. Sometimes Zoe purposely runs right between Skippy (while she's eating at the fence) and the arena fence. I think it's her way of saying "this is not fair, I have to run around and she gets to stand there and eat".
Then my attention shifts to Skippy. I let Zoe have the feed at the edge of the arena and I lunge Skippy. I don't work with Skippy as much on lunging. I have noticed that she has a "M.O." Her trick is to not stay on the rail. She just makes smaller and smaller circles around you. It's as if she says "see, I'm going around and I'll be done sooner." So the challenge is to make her stay on the rail.
The last horse is Sky and I don't lunge him much either. Sky is not related to the other 2. He's an arab gelding, and he tends to be very mellow. His "M.O." is to go once around and stop, turn toward you as if to say "see, I went around once and now I'm done". Then I get on his case and he says "fine...I'll go really fast 1/2 way around and then I'll be done because I exerted so much energy". It's funny to watch him charging up the arena because when he stops, he stops on his front end, his front feet look like pogo sticks as he stops. It's a dead give away to what he's thinking and just makes it easy to read his thoughts...so I can time my requests to "keep it going, Buster".
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