Geeez Lady, I know MY leads!

In my lesson on Monday, KAT had me do some loping in arena size figure-8's, not the circle kind, but the kind where you cross the diagonal of the arena. There's probably some fancy name for it, but I'm over it. Anyway, she had us doing this on one continuous lead so we were doing a counter canter, too. ( I think this was an excercise for us to help him collect, reach underneath, stay up right and slow down, but that's not the point of the story.) I have been very lucky that Junior has always picked up correct leads very well, minus the occasional oopsie, which was nearly always something *I* did. For example, watch the video from the September show.
For a very uncoordinated eight-legged moose, my horse just would NOT stay on a counter canter! He kept swapping to the correct lead about three strides before we'd get to a corner. I had to laugh at him.

Sometimes when I ask for the right lead he'll want to turn immediately off of the wall, so today I tried to ask him for the right lead when we were tracking left and then keep him on that lead all the way, doing more of the counter canter from Monday. He was NOT having it. Again, about three strides BEFORE a corner he would swap. I'd swap him back. About three strides to the next corner he'd swap again, even though I was careful to keep the same leg on him and stay quiet in the saddle. I did find that if I collected him a lot more he would stay for a corner, but never two in a row. It was exhausting, probably for both of us.

I know it's possible to over-use a counter canter so I didn't do much of it, but I found it interesting that he really KNOWS his leads and was clearly annoyed that I had forgotten.


Right Discipline for your horse?

I honestly wrote this post last night BEFORE I caught up with the Fugly Blog this morning (link above)....

Here's a question for you: Have you ever had a horse that you needed to change disciplines with? Specifically one that you purchased to use for one discipline, then after some time/training/etc. determine the horse was better suited to something else? OR did you stay with the discipline and change the horse?

I'm not in that place right now, but I'm not yet convinced Junior will excel in Western Pleasure, and there was a point in my life I considered doing dressage...