Lesson with Kyle

There is going to be a fun show at Upper Pond Stables on Sept. 22nd. I contacted Kyle about getting a crash course in Western Pleasure and Showmanship. Brooke is also a good resource for this but since Kyle owns and trained Luke for these things, I figured I'd check with him first to see if he wanted to help me out. Kyle was happy to do so and we made plans to meet at Upper Pond today at 1:00 pm. I didn't arrive any too early so Kyle and Katie were already at Upper Pond when I arrived. I quickly groomed and tacked Luke up. We decided to use the indoor arena as the footing was a bit better there than in the outdoor arena. I warmed Luke up and he seemed fine. Kyle gave me a lot of good pointers on how to get Luke in the frame I needed him in and how to sit properly. One thing I couldn't do was get Luke to take his left lead. This seemed strange as I'd never had trouble getting him to take it before. I tried and tried and finally Kyle got on him and tried. He did get Luke to take his left lead once but he also had a hard time getting him to do it. We then moved on to working on Showmanship. Luke was a little lazy on the trotting a few times but overall did fine. I leaned a lot....I hope....

After Kyle left, I went down to the jumping ring and popped Luke over some of the jumps. I did it the other day with Cierra and found myself freezing up BAD at anything but the smallest jumps. Luke is the most patient of equines on earth!!! Today I had a long shanked western bit on him so didn't want to touch his mouth at all. He was fine with that and I was not freezing up. Luke was eager and very willing to go over all the jumps I pointed him at. Even the Liverpool. Mary-Jo was getting ready to ride while I was jumping and when she came out of the barn, we both went into the outdoor arena to ride. I worked again on trying to get Luke to take his left lead with no success. Brooke drove in and came down to watch and tried to help me with getting the left lead. Still no luck. He would start to take it, then at the last second, throw his weight to the outside and counter canter. No matter how small a circle I was doing, he would still counter canter. Brooke was amazed he could do this in such small circles. I even put on Brooke's spurs to see if I could get him to give his hindquarters more and he did but still insisted on counter cantering. I was going to have Brooke get on him to see if she had any better luck but I'd worked him pretty hard at this point and though he was being a good boy, I knew he'd had enough. I got off and walked him up to the barn and Mary-Jo, Brooke and I were talking as Mary-Jo untacked Arthur. Eventually, Brooke noticed that Luke was not putting weight on his left rear leg. DUH!! That was the leg he had the pulled groin muscle on!!! THAT was why he was not taking his left lead!!! I felt like such an idiot and felt so bad that I had drilled him so hard trying to get him to take that left lead!! I apologized to Luke a million times. Brooke got some liniment and we put that on his groin muscle. It was very tight and stiff. We massaged the muscle which Luke did not like at first as it was sore. Poor Luke. The next time I hear someone say that mule don't forgive people, I'm going to kick them! Mules are the most forgiving animals I've ever worked with!!! I'm such an idiot..............Luke is amazing...........