Now that some of the things that have been stressing me are dealt with, I am finally getting back in the saddle. It was only a week off but it was still quite a while when you normally go 5-6 days a week.
I made it back out on Friday and had a fairly good ride. We have new help out at the barn and the horses weren’t fed by their usual dinner time. This meant that I pulled Scarlet out of his stall just before he would have gotten dinner. He wasn’t too happy about that. I did give him a few extra treats to make up for it. He somehow got super muddy in a week that hadn’t had any rain so grooming him was quite the challenge.
Scarlet was really focused on the ride even after having a week off and not having dinner. I was very pleased. It is always nice to have a smooth, easy ride after a long chunk of time off. Since we didn’t have to work hard to accomplish what I wanted for the day, I cut the ride short-ish.
Saturday was also a good ride, though we had more issues of him being scared of the one side of the arena. He is doing fairly well to not be trying to run away. He just counter bends so he can see that part of the arena the whole time we go by. I did many many circles on Saturday and it eventually got better. Not perfect but better.
I feel like we have made some improvement on our bend and back lifting. I know we have gotten the canter strides to be much smoother and less tense. Its hard to tell where the improvements are because you are always seeing the same things. Still, I feel like I’m fighting less with Scarlet and that is what matters.
I was chatting with one of the other boarders after the ride and she offered to let us use her trailer when she is working with her horse on trailering to other places. I definitely will take her up on that. Scarlet’s loading has soured so much that it is to the point of being dangerous. So I’ll work on that with him so that he gets back to loading well. We did it before and we can do it again. It will be a good lesson to add to our normal rides.
The Horse Dream 