What's Up Wednesday

 

Last week was like one appointment after the next after the next it seemed like. I had the dentist and the eye doctor, while the horses had the vet for the rest of spring shots, the saddle fitter, and then new shoes on Friday. But now that we have all of that taken care of, hopefully we can buckle down and work on fitness and fun things like jumpies! That is of course, assuming mother nature will play nice. We're definitely getting rained out tomorrow, but that's okay. 

So last week was mostly an easy week for all the horses due to mid week shots mostly. They all handled them well, but I like to take it easy on them afterwards for a couple days. I'm also finding that on the days I do chores, I have a lot less... let's call it bandwidth, to really work the horses particularly hard. I certainly have a horse type, and that type is lazy. So it takes a fair amount of energy and effort on my part to get these three in gear. And sometimes I don't have it in me for all three of them. But I was determined to turn over a new leaf this week. It helped knowing we'd have a rain day on Thursday... (Evidently I am also lazy. I guess my horse type and myself are the same.)

I'm having an interesting time with Al lately. I've been trying to put a little more pressure on him because it's really time we start getting back to some real work. I think he's emotionally a lot more stable than he was last year, and he's shown me that he can handle more now. But at the same time, he's been weaning off the omeprazole, which has me hyper-vigilant about his behavior and anxiety. He's been spooky lately, but it's pretty specifically when I'm on him and not the rest of the time. Which was important for me to realize. Because initially I thought he was reverting back to ulcer-y Al. But I realized he's not anxious in his stall. It's mostly in the ring, and I'm able to pinpoint where it's directed. (Which is at the trees. If it's windy, which we've had a lot of wind lately, or if the birdies are playing in the leaves. Birdies are terrifying you guys.) During my ride yesterday, he seemed to be spiraling off the rails, and I finally got fed up. I put myself a little bit in the back seat for when he propped and tried to spin, and I just really kicked him up into the bridle. When he tried to get distracted and spook, I used my voice or the whip to get his attention back. I hated every second of it because I felt like I was being mean. I didn't want to be that trainer we left, ya know? I don't want him to think I'm going to be unfair to him. But I did need him to know that enough was enough and it was time to focus. So when he did the right things, I made sure to praise him. Both verbally and with a pat. And when he did wrong, I made sure to tell him that too. And you know what? We had a pretty productive ride. It's EXHAUSTING having to ride him like that. But my hope is that this is what he needs now, and in a few rides time I'll be able to back off some. I repeated the ride today, and had similar results. We even popped over a few tiny jumps. And you know what was the most interesting part of the ride? Toward the end of it, he was moving forward on his own. Like I asked for trot and he gave me this lovely forward canter! Which I accepted because he never does that. I feel like I often get excited that things are improving with Al only to be let way down again. So I'm not going to assume things are all better and I've cracked the code. If I know anything about Al, it's that what works today might not work tomorrow. But for now, I'm going to celebrate any small win, and we'll see what tomorrow brings when it comes. Or I guess Friday since tomorrow the sky will be falling all day. 

But you know who's the real MVP around here lately? Shiny. She's the best pony ever. I'm starting to think she didn't feel great whilst on the Ventipulmin. Because ever since taking her off she's like a whole new pony. I mean, we still start out with the ridiculous Shiny Shuffle, but who am I to change that? It's her signature. She's done the most jumping of any of them since we got home, and she feels GREAT to the fences. She's really jumping across nicely, and her stride is open without having to gallop. It does still take some work on my part to get the right forward canter, but once we achieve that, the jumps just flow along one after the next. Last year 2' really felt like as big as she wanted to pop over and I don't think I jumped anything bigger than that on her. (Her kiddo did a few times though.) But now? The 2' feels so easy. I imagine we'll pop around 2'3" again very soon, and maybe if I lose a few lbs we could try some 2'6". No worries if we don't though. I just want her to have fun and feel good. 

The newly shimmed half pad is working out great for Eros and his saddle. I should have tried that myself months ago, but his track record with shimming has always been so bad I was afraid. Lesson learned. Try things. He's been a little sassy lately, but I think that's on me and all those easy days he had last week. This week he's been putting in the work. Tuesday he did his first full ride in the Equibands. We've been using them once a week for awhile now, and slowly building up to a full ride. I worry so much about overdoing anything with him since he's pretty delicate. But he handled them fine! And today he came out ready to go, so obviously, he wasn't feeling overworked. Something we've been having a hard time with for the last many, many months, is right bend. And last week I realized that I think I've been the problem all along. Over the weekend, I made a real effort to focus on what my body parts were doing. And you know what? They weren't doing what I thought they were. My upper body is behaving for the most part. Hands are okay. (As okay as my hands can ever be anyway.) But my hips and legs? All sorts of pointing the wrong way. When I made a real conscious effort to push him out with right thigh and turn my hips toward the right, all of a sudden Eros was bending right. Like easily. Evidently I just haven't actually asked him to all these months. If any of you have any good exercises to straighten my hips out, send them my way. I very clearly have a permanent left bend. I think my other horses just ignore that. Props to them! Haha. 

In other news, I got to braid my little gray friend at the winter barn again on Saturday. 

His owner likes fancy braids, so both times I've done this same thing for them. I'll have to see what else is out there that's allowed for dressage so we can mix it up a little. She doesn't mind the regular rolled up braids either, but I think it might be fun to try something different. In hunter world we don't get to do that. 

That's about it from here. If the weather stops being rainy and or windy, I'll try and get Pivo up and running again. Then maybe I'll have some fun media to share and break up this giant wall of text.