Wally hasn’t lunged for about one month. I’ve been hacking him out around the farm with and without company. I feel at this point that is what he should be doing. However, it’s difficult to video that and I needed something for his page to show his movement and how he’s doing. In addition, I think it’s good to see his progress in training. His lunging has improved considerably as you can see below. At this stage, I begin to develop the canter not by staying on a repetitive circle but by walking up and down the arena. This makes is less difficult and not as much a challenge to his balance. It is also a good warm up. I’ve used the Pixem(robot camera) and attached the beacon to his bridle. At one point the camera gets a bit lost, but all in all the video does what I need it to do. The jump course wasn’t there the last time Wally came by so it is a new development. He sees it, but doesn’t over react and that goes to his steady temperament. Wally is still weaker to the right and you can see he doesn’t want to work that direction, but he does it. This is normal for horses at this stage. He doesn’t have a topline yet, but the hacking out will develop that with some time.
I don’t ride him for long in the video below because I lunged him first. Lunging is a lot of work but the horse gets so much out of it in physical development. You can see on his riding video that his strides are shorter than on the lunging video. He carries his head a bit higher too. That’s because of the lack of strength in his back. As he develops a topline, he will cover more ground as he did on the lunge. In fact, he will also cover more ground than he does on the lunge demonstrating that he will have quite a ground covering stride.