Riding through the buck

In an effort to be fair to myself and document the bad with the good, I thought I'd make a few notes about last night.  What keeps pushing to the top of the constant on-going monologue in my head, what I keep mulling over, were our transitions from trot to canter in the covered arena.  Beauty and I.  When I began riding her earnestly last year in the arena, she would buck, or crow hop, at the walk trot transition. We've got that worked out now after months of trail riding and lots of trotting.  She is pretty coordinated for a young gal and seems to be able to support and balance herself well while carrying my weight.  So, now our issue is the trot to canter transition and the bucking that she seems to want to do at the beginning.

When we begin, I like to warm her up a bit with a few games on-line on the 45 ft. line.  We do the falling leaf pattern, change of directions, and work on our circles at several different speeds.  Sometimes, she will buck with the saddle on when I ask for the upward transition to canter.  She gives one or two good bucks, then settles into the canter.  Then I mount and ride her for a while, playing with obstacles, or practicing riding the rail in the 1st track with minimal direction from myself.  As we slowly warm up and get into a nice trotting pattern, she is still calm, doing everything nicely, with minimal sassyness like little head tosses.  But, when I move into the canter and put my weight back, she more often than not springs into a series of bucks.  Some last night were not more than crow hops, but one series almost unseated me.  She popped me out of the saddle and onto her neck before I bounced back into my seat.  She doesn't carry on with it much, and I know if I were more agile and able to do the one-rein up to a stop, I could probably get her to quit before it even gets started.  But, I'm still finding myself floundering around on top of her, not able to nip it in the bud quickly enough.  Oh well, I know that with most things, practice will fix this.  After all, it's green trying to teach green.  And believe me, it's going to be top on my list of things to work on when I take her down to Dave Ellis' later this month!  Ride, Matt, Ride - Ride with the wind! (Canter her little butt off and get this stupid bucking bullcrap over and done with!)

So, the goal of this post is to be able to look back at it in several months and say to myself, "Oh, yeah - I remember when she used to have that problem!"  Of course, in this mental picture, we have been cantering off into the sunset everynight, and the little crow hops and bucks are a bad, fading memory.