Clipping, Bits, and Lunging

Today Reffy's vacation officially ended! He may get a short one next week due to that Christmas nonsense awesomeness, but he'll be working steadily till then and even more so after. Our session started with a little bit of beauty work. As usual, he was a sensible dude, and allowed me to clip his bridle path, whiskers (until he stuck his nose in a bucket of water and was too wet to continue, doh!), stick the clippers close to his ears to see how that will go, and even clip a bit at the top of his tail where he'll eventually get a fancy dressage tail. My clippers are not so sharp for tail sculpting, so instead I grabbed my pulling comb and got rid of some of those awful dead broken bits. Check out the difference!

His tail when I first brought him home:

His tail after a little pulling and trimming today:

Looks pretty good right?

Then we headed into the indoor to lunge. You would never know he's had a whole week off. I put him in a loose ring, french link snaffle, and though he didn't fuss at all, I think it is too small for his mouth. Tomorrow I'm going to measure him to the best of my ability and then borrow as many different bits as I can until I find one we both like. I'd rather not buy a bunch of bits he's not going to use.

Here are a couple screen shots from his lunging video today.

Once again, I am really awful at holding a whip and line in my left hand and keeping him moving as forward as he should be while video taping. He was definitely much better when I wasn't trying to multi-task. He is also not as bendy and round when he is travelling to the left, so there will be more work in that direction from now on. I just can't wait to get this guy HOME!!! Lol.

We also worked on his habit of turning in every time I ask him to walk or woah.  I think the biggest problem is he doesn't actually woah until he feels like it, no matter what I'm doing on the end of the lunge line. Hopefully if we do a little bit every time and I verbally say woah while I'm riding for a while he'll figure it out. Woah means woah!! ;)

Lastly, I have cracked the awful head tossing, must rub, I'd like to see you try to get my halter on, nonsense after I take his bridle off. Hooray! I tied the lunge line around his neck for something to control him if needed, and just let him stand and settle after his bridle was off. Then I moved and stood in front of him, slipped his halter on, clipped on the cross ties, and viola! no thrashing around AT ALL! Go team!

Tomorrow we'll just continue on with much of the same and I think I'll get on him on Thursday. Stay tuned!