Fall Uno is good but not easy

 Uno has been fairly spicy the last few weeks.  We had a mid Oct lesson that involved hacking a bit before where Uno stayed in the requested gate, but moved as fast as possible.  We tried to work through it in warm up, but I was pretty frazzled by the time Trainer got there.  We went back to walking a large 40 m square, focusing on the smalled possible aids to make the turns and straight lines until he settled.  At which point he was totally his normal self and went on to jump AMAZINGLY!

Out here being the best.

So it wasn't really a suprise that our rides at home were a lot more like the hack and not the lesson.  There was a lot of jigging and snorting and spooking at things that did not require it.

So last week I put him on the lunge and let him canter until he was sane-ish. 42 minutes later (this is not an exaggeration - he cantered for 42 minutes) the canter was nice, relaxed, uphill, and reaching with the shoulders.  So he cooled down and got dinner.

Rides since then have been hit or miss - if I hack out for 3 or more miles he really zones in and I am able to get all the good slow soft work.  If I cant I ave rides like last night, where every jump was great, but I spent 40 mins basically being run off with.  

We have another lesson on Sunday to hopefully give me more tools to get the "good work" at home.