Titles Are Hard

Yeah I just gave up trying to think of a title for this.

Things are going well enough over here. The ground dried up enough for this last week to be a normal week of walking Scarlet and riding Cav.

Scarlet is doing great. I’ve been contemplating scheduling the vet to come out and do another acupuncture/pemf treatment on him. The little bit of acupuncture she did on his leg while out for his dental made a huge difference. I don’t think an overall treatment will change things for him but it would be nice to keep him as good as he can be. We’re walking between 10-20 minutes and he has his moments of being too spunky but he’s mostly good.

Cav hadn’t been ridden much for about a month before all our crazy rain as he’d smacked his leg hard in his stall and we were worried about the bump. But when he never was off and the vet said its just superficial, we started him back in full work just in time for the rain to shut it down for about 10 days. I had the first full ride on him and we just did a trail loop with a bit of trot and canter in the arena. The following Tuesday was when I next rode and he was so stiff and sore. He’s a very forward horse so when he was very resistant to moving off, I knew he wasn’t feeling great. I carefully loosened him up with lots of turns, serpentines, and stretching. His owner mentioned she’d worked him hard the day before. Thursday he felt better but I still kept it focused on stretching since he was out of shape.

Saturday I wasn’t feeling a real ride so I figured I’d do the trail loop and then just enough trot and cantering to call it a ride afterward. We did the trail and were almost back at the barn when he spotted two horses halfway back along the mile loop. They were trotting and for some reason, that broke his brain. He flipped out. He did this weird rear and buck move which was actually easier to sit than either one alone would have been. It felt like what people do with toy horses to pretend they are running.

Normally when a horse does that, I pull their nose to my knee and boot them in a circle. But on the trail, there are tons of holes and I can’t avoid them. So I somehow muscled him forward. We trantered into the barn and when we got to a flat space, we did some trot side pass circles until he was willing to stop. He was super tense and stupid so I went to the arena to ride him down. It took a long time to get the brain back between the ears. I ended up being on him for an hour and fifteen minutes. I made sure to not ask him for hard things, just things that would make him think as he is still out of shape. But apparently he has enough energy to be stupid.

I got him tired but I was equally tired. I ate a huge lunch and then passed out for two hours right afterward. My legs and butt were so sore the next day. I’m not too annoyed at him though. I’ve been riding him for months and that’s the only blow up he’s ever had. And it didn’t come close to unseating me. I am contemplating how we could safely work through that issue. It’s not a great one to have since I can’t control who else decides to be on the trail.

That is unfortunately the last ride I will have for a while as I’m getting my wisdom teeth extracted this week. So no riding for me until my face resembles a face and not a melon.