Rethinking the Secondary Cue

Dawn had her usual Thursday off.  Since it was raining hard this afternoon, and Halloween to boot, there was almost no one at the barn this afternoon - which meant my boys and I had the indoor to ourselves.

Red and I had a good work session, with lots of trot and canter.  I got a nice "big walk" (without a secondary cue for forward, just using my energy) before asking for trot, and had a very nice first trot transition.  But then he was pretty sluggish at the trot initially, and was resenting my use of a tap with the dressage whip as a secondary cue - he did move forward, but I was having to nag him, and he was not happy about the whole thing - this means the secondary cue isn't working as it should but is becoming a brace of its own.  Red's got a strong sense of fairness, and it's clear he didn't think what I was doing was fair - he didn't do anything bad but he was clearly annoyed.  I got ride of the whip once he was moving forward nicely and he maintained it well.  So I'm rethinking what to do - I'm not going to nag him with my leg to get forward - he'd resent this just as much and he's a master of the brace-against-brace thing, and it wouldn't be soft.  I'm not sure what I'll do - some experimenting to come.  Next ride we'll try no whip, and I may let him warm up a bit more slowly at first rather than asking for so much forward right away.  If I need a secondary cue, I may try something a bit different, like slapping my hand on my leg - we'll see.

Pie and I did a lot of cantering work - work on his departures - his walk/canter departure tracking left is almost there; the right lead still needs work - and work on continuous cantering with softness.  He did very well and his forward at the trot was pretty good, even though I (deliberately) wasn't carrying my dressage whip to give him secondary cues for forward - he's not resentful of this as Red is, but I wanted to see how we'd do without it.

It's supposed to be colder and windy, but sunny, tomorrow, so horses should feel good - particularly with all that fresh mud to roll in!