Yesterday I decided to lunge Denver in the rig and do some hill work on the lunge line. He's been somewhat heavy on my hands ever since getting back from being ouchy so I wanted to work on that a bit more. If he leans on the rig he is leaning on himself so it should encourage him to carry himself like he used to. Denver's never been super good about lunging, he's gotten wayyy better but he can get a little heavy on my hand when he gets tired. Anyways, I started him off just lunging on a hill so he had to go up and down hills and put some effort into his step. After walking, trotting, and cantering both directions I decided I would try something a little different and did some kind of in hand stuff. I would take him and trot him along our fence line just going back and forth and then I started running up and down hills with him. He actually got a stellar workout in. Denver isn't usually very foamy at the bit, even when lunging in the rig where I know there is self carriage he doesn't foam often. When I started doing in hand work and running next to him he started to foam a little bit more and soften up quite a bit. After trotting up and down hills and making him use his muscles he was actually pretty foamy which made me really happy. I think I might just start doing in hand work as a majority of my lunging work because I love how he was using himself. He wasn't working very hard lunging on a circle because instead of framing he was kind of just dragging his head on the ground because he didn't want to work. But with the in hand work I was able to bump him up and be sure he was using himself. So ya I was pretty happy with that. Today it might be too wet to do what I did yesterday so I think I will just ride him instead. Hopefully he gets back to where he was before he was really sore.
