Читать книгу Finding the Missed Path. The Art of Restarting Horses онлайн

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The two of us trotted around for a couple of minutes with Cooper being his calm and quiet self, but then, almost as soon as I began to set him up to pick up his lope, I began to feel a tightness in him that I hadn’t felt before. Keep in mind, when I say I was setting him up to pick up his lope, all that consisted of was trotting into a turn on the far end of the arena, then, as we were coming out of the turn, I simply began to think about changing the rhythm we were in from the two-beat trot to the three-beat lope. As with all of my horses, when asking for a change of gait, I use minimal, if any leg, and in this case, I used no leg that I was aware of.

Still, as soon as I began thinking lope, or three beats, I felt a tightness that started in Cooper’s lower back and seemed to spread both backward into his hindquarters and forward into his withers. Instead of pushing through the stiffness, I slowed him down and asked him to relax again, which he did almost right away before we began setting up for the lope once again. But again, almost as soon as I began to think about changing rhythm, Cooper’s back began quickly to tighten. This time, however, and before I could ask him to slow and relax, he threw himself into the lope, took two uncomfortable hop-steps, and then dropped his head and started bucking.