Training Ride at home!

Beautiful fall day. I had plans of trailering out today to maybe Camp Far West where I could ride Psuntana for a couple of hours. He is almost getting to the point where I can get some consistent work out of him, at least on the wide open trails. Like most young horses he does not seem to want to trot much. He has a nice little cantor that he fells very comfortable in with nice transitions. I remember when I started MONK, he was pretty much the same, loved to cantor, now he has a top speed trot of 18mph, and seems to prefer his trot. So, I will basically ignore his lack of trotting and just get him legged him anyway we can.

We started out a little late today and it is getting darker earlier. I rode him at home, I have a 8 mile coarse which has several thousand feet of elevation gain. I can tell that he is much more fit then the last time he did this route. I let him work at the 180+ HR for up to 5 min and then walk him until he is back down to 120. Today, it took about 30 seconds to get back to 120 where a couple of weeks ago it took 3 minutes. I also let him run a little on the mile hill back up to the ranch, and he actually tried to run away with me, which he had not done before. He was really pretty fast. When he decided he didn't want to stop I made him go a little faster and farther then he has before and cranked on the hackamore until he stopped. I did get off and tighten up the chin strap for a little more whoa power.

He finished out the ride with a recovery of 6 min to 60 BPM. By the time I pulled his hackamore, breast collar and boots he was 65 in about 3 min. It took him the other 3 to loose those 5 beats. This is pretty common in my experience with a unfit horse. Lots of time you will see the HR swing back and forth... If you recover too fast, your probably not stressing your horse enough... 60 in 10 has been the norm forever, but tons of variables. I tend to more cooling out these days and not look for that 60 in 10, but guess as to what it might of been. Not very technical but hope it works.

Psuntana is a barefoot horse, with not very big feet, very nicely formed, and slightly toed in. He wears Gloves from Easycare for his foot attire, we only use these for rough terrain or gravel roads, otherwise his does all his work barefoot.

I am having lots of fun with this youngster. He is a very fun horse. If our conditioning keeps going at this rate he will be ready for a 50 pretty soon. I have done 18 miles with him, that is his farthest, and it was at a pretty slow pace.

His body has already changed considerably, he has lost most of his hay belly.