Lunging disaster yesterday and a fantastic ride today!

Woohoo! I have had an absolutely fantastic ride today, and wanted to post about it straight away. I have a short update on my lunging session yesterday as I was so busy last night (still cleaning at 11pm) that I just didn't get a chance to get on the computer.

As you can see from the title my lunging didn't go well again yesterday. It is a difficult situation as lunging Diesel is so difficult at the moment as he just naps and plays up, but I really need to lunge him to work him harder to help lose some weight. He is still too young to ride him long enough to help his weight problem. If anyone has any suggestions I would really appreciate it. So anyway, he was napping again today, and turning in to face me, I try to move back to his side and send him on, but he turns on a circle to face me faster then I can move! This is very frustrating and I am not sure how to stop him doing it, I am going to do some research online to see if I can come up with any ideas, and again if anyone has any suggestions please do comment. I put a little jump up as Diesel normally enjoys jumping on the lunge and I thought this would get him going more forward, however he just decided to spook and run out constantly, so I put the pole back on the floor and set up 3 ground poles. It took a further 20 minutes just to get him to trot over them without stopping. I really hope this is just a phase he is going through and that he will grow out of it soon.

Onto the good news, I had an absolutely fantastic ride today and I am feeling so much better and so much more confident - just in time for my lesson tomorrow. I set out 2 ground poles, one on the long side between E and H and another on the diagonal just before X, and aimed to work on circles and bends to further improve Diesel's balance, with the ground poles to encourage him to use himself and step under with his back feet more as he tends to go flat and lose impulsion when working on circles. He worked very well in walk for 15 minutes moving forward nicely and bending nicely. The straightness he showed to start with has been lost, but I think this is because of my 'fiddling' to get him to bend properly or ride to a letter, that he has now lost his natural straightness so I will have to work on that, by allowing him to move and not do too much to interfere. I really felt like having a trot today, which I haven't felt like much in the last few weeks, so I had a trot on the right rein first, as this is his 'worse rein' and he finds it harder to lean on the bit and ignore me on this rein, we trotted from X, over the pole between E and H then came back to walk at C. I then changed the rein and trotted from C over the E/H pole, then onto B before coming over the diagonal pole and finished with a trot to halt at H. This doesn't sound like much but I was very pleased, he happily went over the poles and was bending nicely and listening rather than leaning onto his forehand and ignoring me. I finished the ride by giving him the rein and allowing him to stretch down, which is great to work on our 'free walk', and stops him panicking when I give with the reins now.

I am really looking forward to my lesson tomorrow, I hope it goes as well as today.