Amounting Issues

Ugh. Rides like these make me want to scream and cry and pound at something. I'm so frustrated right now I don't really know what to do with myself. I knew this was coming; it's been building up in the past few weeks but it doesn't make easier to take. I feel so unfulfilled from this ride.

It's really nothing new. It's happened before. I know it'll happen again. But really, Rush? All I was asking for was a little straightness. You didn't have to freak just because my inside leg swung back a few inches to straighten you out. I even gave you time to decompress, but nooo apparently once I've committed the biggest sin ever of actually putting my leg on your side everything is ruined and gone to shit and the whole world has to pay because of me.

I just.. ugh. It feels better to rant about it a bit, but honestly having a bad ride is the perfect way to ruin the day and it's really hard to just boost yourself out of the "well gee that was crap" mood. I tried to end on a good note.. and kept trying.. for like half an hour, until I decided I best stop before we try to kill each other. I walked her out bareback because I was so frustrated I knew she would try to jig if I kept the saddle on.

This sort of behavior /should/ be unacceptable. She should know that it's not okay to blow up and get indignant every time I ask her for something she doesn't want to do. But I don't know how to push through it. She's not reacting maliciously or stubbornly, and once she gets set off it's near impossible to work her back down to rideable.

To top it all off, we're still having issues at the mounting block. 

We did not look like this today.

Hill Work

Today we tackled the aforementioned hill work. It was a pretty good ride, except for Rush's momentary regression in which she decided that standing still for mounting was too difficult and she was just going to run off before I was all the way in the saddle. I put a stop to that lickety split- we turned right around and stood by the mounting block, then I dismounted and remounted until she stood the entire time. It took two tries after the initial mounting before she settled down and found her brain again.

mirrors!

Then we toddled down to the dressage ring to warm up. Everyone else is at a show today, so the ring was still freshly dragged from this morning. I love having a tabula rasa to ride in; I get to see how crooked and wiggly Rush is when we do things like change direction or trot down the diagonal (very). We did light walk and trot work- she gets very antsy if you pick up the reins at the walk, so I'm getting her used to treating the walk as an actual gait and part of the ride instead of the pace where she gets to do whatever she wants. Our trot work was average, nothing special but nothing horrible. She got pretty distracted looking at herself in the mirrors and tripped over herself a couple times coming around the corner.

Then we went up behind the barn to the long incline. There are two other hills on the property we could have used- one is medium length but pretty steep, and one is a more sloping incline but is pretty short. The one I chose is a medium grade and about the length of the barn, so that's.. probably 120ish feet. We did 5 sets, so 5 times up and 5 times down. She seemed to enjoy it; she definitely wanted to keep exploring once we got to the top of the hill the first time.

Ride at Dusk

My ride today was pretty great. Actually, I'm writing this.. 10 or so minutes after I hopped off, and Rush is chilling in her sun pen as we speak. I dragged out three cavalettis and set them up as trot poles down the side of the ring. They were set at like 6'', so she had to pay attention and pick up her feet a little more than usual. The first few times were laughably disastrous- feet flying everywhere and awkward leaps- but after she figured it out she was a champ. We spent most of the trot work focusing on going through those calmly until she figured out that her feet were supposed to go in between the poles every time, then moved on to canter work.

This is the first time I cantered her in the jumping ring without doing some canter work in the dressage ring first, and she by far surpassed my expectations. To the right her canter was a little more up&down than I would have liked, but I got her to settle into a more forward rolling pace by really sitting back, spreading my hands, and encouraging her to open up her stride a little. She never ever got fast, which was awesome awesome awesome because that used to be a big problem that we never completely surmounted. To the left, her transitions are a bit rougher and she starts out like a banshee booking it but once I settle her she's a little lady again. She was even better to the left than to the right (when does that EVER happen???) and through the turns she offered some great bending and stretching, really reaching down for the bit and balancing herself.

Tomorrow I'm thinking we finally buckle down and do some hill work. Her topline is starting to bulk up a bit, hooray, and I'd like to keep mixing it up for her so she doesn't get too bored with all this flatwork.

Mixed Signals

The past few days have been a little frustrating. Rush seems to have so much energy at the beginning of the ride that she's incapable of focusing on anything, and if I ask for anything she doesn't like, such as slowing down.. or looking less like a llama.. or traveling in a straight line.. shit blows up and she's throwing one of her hissy fits. Yesterday I worked through it, kinda, by cantering on a circle. Today.. yeah, not so much. I was so tired of dealing with this ridiculous behavior that I went to the zone of: I'm hot, sweaty, and tired. You're being a brat. If you want to trot like you're in a harness race, fine.

So then I bullied her around the ring, making her TROTFAST while keeping her head down, and if she wanted to canter? No beans, you'll just have to go in a tiny circle until you trot again. I'm not exactly proud of this method, but it worked. So there's that. After I deemed her tired, we had a walking break to separate that work out from the actual one, and then went on to have a lovely ride. We did more work on bending, then did some solid cantering that was pretty impressive. Her canter has been the best surprise of bringing her back into work so far. When I first started riding her, it was like a jackhammer. You could two point, lifting yourself as far out of the saddle as possible, and still have your butt smack the saddle every stride. Now? Her canter is wonderful and rolling and forward; she seems to have lost the up-down motion that was so horrific to ride.

We finished up the ride with some wonderful relaxed cantering in the jumping arena, which was awesome. I was worried she'd get fast because there was more space to accelerate in, but she stayed nice and relaxed and just rolled around the ring like a doll. So it was, all in all, actually a good ride- but the way it started out was godawful. And it seems to be a trend, so I need to find a solution, fast.

Splish Splash

In preparation for.. something, the water complex in the jumping ring was filled up this week. Given Rush's obsession with water, I had been praying that it would be filled at some point during our stay. I had actually come up pretty late to ride, due to extreme heat and social obligations, and was just doing a light 10 min walk/trot hack to let her stretch out but didn't really have time for anything more. And then I saw this. So that ride was mostly us tromping around in the water, nose to the ground, splashing water. I vowed to come up really early the next morning to let her play more, since I didn't know how fast the water would dissipate.

Bright and early, 7:00 the next morning we were tramping back down to the ring for more play time. I had suited up in some rain boots my sister left me, since my old ones are for 7 year olds and come up to my mid-calf. I led her into the water.. and water promplty seeped into my right boot. Eeps. I sucked it up and let her have her splishy splashy time, which she loved, and we wandered into the water during our ride as well. Whenever I rode on the buckle and let her decide where to go, we ended up back in the water.. Hmm..

Today there was still some water in there, so after our awful/wonderful ride we practiced walking, trotting, and cantering into the water. No hesitation. My pony is awesome. I think she liked cantering the best because it makes the biggest splashes..

Rambunctious in the Round Pen

Not actually from today. Details.

Today was Rush's big day.. CANTER TIME! We've been walk/trotting under saddle for two weeks now, and she's gotten a hecka ton better. At first we weren't so much for the trotting at a reasonable pace or bending or even going in a straight line, but those issues are smoothing out and she's gained back some muscle tone so we decided to start tackling the canter. It's gonna be a looooong haul.

I went in the evening today, since I had plans this morning and it's been so godawfully hot that it would have been unfair to ask her to do anything between the hours of 9-5. Tossed her in the round pen (the awesome round pen that gets dragged/raked every day and it has sprinklers what.) and we did walk/trot in each direction very belligerently, since apparently having a nekked face makes us very opinionated on what we should be doing. 

And then crazy whee! fun happened. Basically it was chaos happening and I couldn't really control much so I just tried to keep her from breaking when she was cantering properly and not cross-firing. I also worked on pushing her to the outside of the round pen, since she likes to cut in when she's being naughty. I let her stop in each direction after she had made it one time around without breaking/cross-firing.. honestly she barely cantered at all. And guess what? DRENCHED in sweat by the end. Sweat was literally dripping off her. I felt really bad so I sacrificed myself and hopped on bareback to walk her out, and we tooled around in the dressage ring (which is COVERED, did I mention that?). 

After she was reasonably cooled down, but not any drier than previously, I took her up and hosed all the sweat off of her. She managed to nick herself on her back right, just above the coronet band, but it's nothing serious. I just scrubbed it with Betadine and slathered some Corona on it, much to her dismay. She hates Corona for some reason. If you try to put it on her when she's in her stall, she literally runs to the opposite corner, naughty thing. So I sprayed her off, inventoried all one of her scrapes and took care of it, then gave her a Sore No More rinse and let her chill in a sun pen for an hour or so. Which she probably hated.

Tomorrow I'll probably stretchy walk/trot to see how she's feeling, if she isn't too sore/tired we'll work on flexion and bending in the dressage ring. If she's not feeling 100% she can have some time in the sun pen and get the rest of the day off, and we'll start work up the next day.

I'm thinking a 3-day cycling pattern in regards of her getting fit at the canter, since I don't want to overdo it or make her do the same thing every day.

Day 1: barebalk walk to warm-up, then round pen work on cantering

Day 2: walk/trot hack working on bending, keep it pretty brief

Day 3: walk/trot hack to warm up and then hill work at the walk

Rinse and repeat!

Life Goes On

Where did we leave of? With the mystery lameness, I think. A quick update, then, to get us all caught up. I had another vet out for a second opinion because I was seriously considering buying Rush. He basically did the same tests as the first- nerve block on the pastern, she trotted out sound, then x-rays. Except this time, the x-rays revealed something! She has a 'significant bone spur' in her coffin joint. The vet was confident it was treatable and that she had a very reasonable chance of being sound, so I went ahead.. and bought her! We injected the coffin joint, gave her two days of handwalking, and voila.. sound horsie. He also recommended 2º wedges on her front feet, which hasn't happened yet but I'm working on finding a farrier.

I moved barns in a very dramatic and traumatic situation, which I'll blog about some day when I can write about it without getting upset. As of August 1 we are now at a new place with state-of-the-art accommodations and basically everything you could ever want. It's a Dressage/Eventing barn, and whilst we are Hunters, right now we're just doing walk/trot flatwork building up conditioning again.

Rush is blossoming; she loves it at the new place. It's pretty low-key there, there are only 7 horses on the property right now and I am definitely the youngest person there. The horses there are all huge goofy warmblood geldings, so obviously Rush is the princess of the place and everyone loves her. There's so much to talk about that I couldn't possibly cover it in one post, so I'll leave you with a picture of her in her wonderful new stall :)