The two month marker

Here is to two months of hard work and patience - OTTBs really are the best!

At this point we're around two months in! Ryker is going very well, especially in his dressage work.  Yesterday I let him run around in the ring, not something I like to do, since I do not want to associate the place of play with the place of work, but he needed to move out.  The turnout, is our course, muddy... so Ryker does very little moving around when he's outside.  All that unused energy was building up, making him more an more distractible (typical thoroughbred...).  He ran, and ran, and ran - back and forth and around the ring, strutting his stuff and finally trotted over to the center of the ring, where Kait and I were watching, to say hello.  His expression was vastly different, he loves to run, and was so happy to finally have a chance to do so; when he was done he was ready to work.

He looked so content, relaxed, and focused, I made the comment to Kait, "I bet I could get some serious dressage work out of him now"... and well, watch the video :)  He is still working on getting a grasp on moving forward into the contact, I can get a little too strong in my hands and curl him up on occasion, so I apologize for that... he is so willing and tries so hard!

Enjoy a little snippet of our first "time to put on the big boy pants" dressage ride:
(Thank you Kait for your eyes and input from the ground, and of course the video!)