We Improved (a bit)

I've already talked about it, it's not a true love story in between me and Excalibur.
He's not the smartest, most willing horse, let's be honest. He's not nasty, but he's lazy...

I've started to improve him on that point, I've found that rewards that can be eaten were the most helpfull.
I show you some lunge work I did past winter, so you can see all that energy flowing out of him (or not...)

Direct link to the lunge part (link with a time code): https://youtu.be/h9Kd8ZzNpxE?t=192

Or if you dont want to follow the link just watch here at 3:12 (you can also stop watching at 6:09 for the lunge part)

What you see on this vid is not because the floor is muddy, it's really how... motivated he naturaly is no matter the weather, floor condition or exercice.

If I was able to improve his walk and trot on lunge, I wasn't able to have him at canter. He doesn't wanted to. So I had to work this when riding. After a few search on how to administrate rewards when on the back of the horse, we worked on the depart in canter...
You can see on the video how I took the bad habit to lean forward every time I ask for canter because on how hard it is to have it. Yes it's not helping - I know - but I didn't even realised how much I was doing that.

You can see at 0:56 that he's bucking, bucking is a real problem with him - as it is with horses that doesn't put energy in their canter.

As you may or may not know, I am mostly a self thaught rider, so yes I am not perfect on saddle. I lack of actual riding class so pushing away the bad habits, with a horse that indulge thoses, is a really difficult task.

On another side, I can agree with you he's really good at standing and he's a very obediant pony :')

So well, it wasn't perfect but as spring came, I had already improved the pony, his willing was better even if he had his own problems, like he doesn't like to canter on the line of the arena that's not enclosed.
So yes now he can walk, trot and canter with more energy, but there's still difficulties and you better stay concentrated on him or he'll slow down.

But I got him well enough to start jumping a bit, just to change our exercices. He kinda liked it.

Then after a winter and a spring working and improving, I got 3 friends at home this summer! I jumped on the occasion to do multiples videos and show our progress. Since then, I wanted to actually wrote this post!

So I got not one, but tree way more experienced rider than me on the pony, and believe me, they had a harsh time. Because yes, he's better, but he's also able to test if by chance he can just be slug himself.

Who's gonna be next for a ride?

@Kelly_Breyerhorse she's the youngest, she's having 2 half lease on horses and also is working for her riding center... she litteraly spent her time working with and riding horses.

You can see her asking for canter, she's leaning forward with her feet not at the right place, sorry girl it's just how awfull that pony is...

Here's a canter round, on the good, easy side of the pony. You can see how hard it is to keep him moving. And I said it again: she's a better rider than me. How on hell do I manage to do the same? I wonder when I see this.

@AGrassStory she's got years and years of riding and she own a mule. So she know how to ride for sure.

But well... cantering with Excalibur is a mercyless exercice. Here's a canter round with her, on the difficult side of the pony. It's a real challenge. And I will wrote it a lot there but she's a better rider than me.

 (And yes I love this vids with all our energy flowing... really tun the sound on!)

@Manghorse_Modelhorse also have got years and years of riding beside her. She's not currently riding a lot but she's experienced for sure. Her wish was actually to jump a bit, so we worked on this.

But don't worry, it was hard for her too...

For a change here's a trotting video! Should I said it again? She's a better rider than me.

And a beautiful jump archieved at the end of the trip!

So now you have seen that Excalibur is not an easy ride, so let's talk about how he improved, because I showed what I could obtain out of him to my friends. Yes they had difficulties, because they didn't know him... but for myself he was just "greater" than before ;)

I of course worked him on walk, trot, canter...

But mostly on bars... with the help of my friends and their advices we did great things! Even a first try of them on canter!

(You can stop watching this one after 1:35 because it's just talk in french after)

I was just so thrilled! Look how easy it seems just from thoses captions.

We jumped a bit too! We even did that jump several times with no stop in between.

Well helped by all of our good work, I was able to show what I started to work with the pony in spring: start in canter from walking. And it was really good, like we did this our whole life.

And also the next step, canter from stop.

So if you have taken the time to watch all thoses vids (and know, there's a bunch) you have now seen the pony progressing from our difficult start to now.
It's better, still not perfect, but really better. We are now better.
I hope our future might be bright, but there's still a few things - the most difficult- I need to fix. I'll talk about that later.