Like flying a kite.

As if right on cue, Hampton had a major case of the spring stupids today.
I knew it as soon as I cross tied him. There was excessive RaptorSnorting (Hampton's trademark sound). Dancing in the crossties.
Pooping.
And generally giving me a hard time. (He got several elbows to the ribs).

I did not hesitate to break out the lunging equipment. I lunged him for maybe 10 minutes and he was frisky and tense but not badly behaved. However, when I got on I knew right away that he was no where near relaxed. Also, it was sleeting and snowing. Yay. (Oddly, it wasn't that COLD ... but the precipitation was annoying)

So, I set up the below exercise. Four groundpoles in while we trotted over on a 20 meter circle until I felt a little more confident that my horse and my butt were not going to part ways. He never did anything super bad (except spooking at GOD KNOWS WHAT), but I like to prevent things before they happen.

After I felt his back start to relax, we did leg yield off the rail - over the poles - leg yield back to the rail. This turned out to be a super exercise and almost immedately his back relaxed even more and he was swinging in the trot. I even snuck in some shoulder-in and sitting trot. He was still fresh but I thought hey, for a nasty day at least I was sort of productive and called it quits. Even after our ride he was STILL snorting and dancing in the crossties. DAAAYMN horse! He likes to remind me sometimes that he is indeed 3/4 TB and also not even 6 years old yet. This behavior not even a week after he packed me around at a horse show and slept through a leadline class.

Here is my awful drawing. The red lines are the 4 ground poles. The blue dots are the track we took.