Where's JJ's Brain?

JJ and I have fallen into something of a rhythm. Once JJ is tacked, our ride typically starts out with a game of Where's JJ's Brain. This is something like Where's Waldo, except in the search of JJ's brain your book is the size of an encyclopedia and the target may or may not actually be on any single page. JJ starts out all hyper and ADD, listening to the quad roving around, watching the other horses, eyeing the neighbors, and consistently trying to run and stay above the bit. During this time I do my best to stay patient with him. I know his brain is in there somewhere, it's just a matter of finding it and switching it to the "on" position. And so I've created some exercises. We start out by trotting a cloverleaf pattern around the jumps at the bottom of the ring. I'll do that until he begins to anticipate our turns, then ask him to walk and leg yield down the long side. He's really quite good at the lateral movement, but not so good at staying at a walk. Then I'll go back to the trot with more cloverleafs and some figure eights thrown in. In between circles of the figure eight I do some trot-halt-trot transitions. Again, he's usually throwing his head in the sky to avoid the bit at this point, so halt transitions are particularly challenging.

Anyway, after about 20 or 30 minutes (depending on the time of day - in the morning only about 10 minutes, anytime after 4PM 30 minutes+) of finding the brain games, JJ finally begins to focus and I start our ride. It's like instead of warming up JJ's muscles I need to spend that time warming up his mental game. Sometimes it's extremely frustrating and I really want to give up, but I know that's when I have to push myself harder. If I give up, I'll have twice as hard a time getting JJ to focus the next day. So I have to stick with it and find his brain because each time I do he begins to learn where it needs to be.

Once we start our real ride he's a lot of fun. He's slowly experimenting with stretching into the bit, and every now and then we get some really nice strides. He relaxes nicely once his brain is working and I can do all sorts of fun things with him. And, with all the cloverleaf patterns we've been doing, our bending and circles are becoming quite nice!

Thanks to a Barn Buddy I have some awesome videos and pictures to share today! Thanks Barn Buddy!

Videos 1+2: JJ towards the beginning of our ride. Brain doing pretty well at this point. I rode him at 1PM - early enough that my Where's Waldo book was only the size of a long novel.

I got a couple canters in today too! This was particularly exciting because up until this point I had only cantered in the field, and once in the ring, with no one to witness our awesomeness. I'm pretty sure everyone thought I was lying when I told them how nice JJ's canter was, but today we had a large audience!

Videos 3+4: JJ Cantering.