Awful ride this afternoon. I don't even feel right calling it a ride. I went to the farm to bring Gali's feed out, and despite having a ton of work to do for my final exams this week, I decided I should take advantage of the mild weather and ride. Mistake.
Our warm up at the walk was okay - he wasn't very attentive, but he seemed to have forgotten about the scary monster at the back of the ring from yesterday, so I expected good things. Mistake #2.
When I asked him to pick up a trot, he grabbed the bit and dragged me to the end of the ring. I brought him back and took a second to think, and realized I may have been absent in my outside aids. So, we tried again. I applied my outside aids. He blew me off and dragged me. I lost round three as well. I brought him back for a walk break so I could think it through and figure out if it was me that was causing his behavior, and attempted to trot again, this time paying close attention to every single movement my body made. We accomplished a little bit in terms of GET OFF MY OUTSIDE LEG, HORSE, for about fifteen minutes, before the dragging began again, to the opposite side of the ring. I got in two point, bridged my reins, and decided to let him fight himself for a little while, and of course he softened and stopped leaning so much - until I sat back and gathered my reins again, then it was drag drag drag, bolt bolt bolt. I was beyond frustrated at that point, and out of ideas, so I grabbed a lunge line and lunge whip and decided to approach this from the ground.
The first flick of the whip and "trot, trot" got a capriole-esque leap into the canter. I brought him back and asked a little quietly, which just got a regular launch into the canter. We went through the transition four or five times before I got the trot, and then it was only about six working circles before Gali took off across the ring, forcing me to drop my whip, let the line out, and dig in so he could not get loose. We had two more dragging bolts (and the post-bolt... discussions) before I finally finished on a few circles of stretchy trot in each direction, and a few nice up/down transitions between walk, trot, and canter.
When I got in to the barn and untacked, I burst into tears. I was so frustrated and had felt so helpless - no matter what I tried, I could not fix him today. I'm sure I wasn't helping under saddle, but I have no idea why he was such an asshole while lunging - he has only ever pulled shit while lunging TWICE in the three years I owned him - once, on the first day I had him, and another time when he was just miserable at a farm and did not like the person lunging him at all. He's normally so good on the line.
Of course, this would happen four days before we ride in front of Lendon Gray.
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