Whew. Been a month. Definitely had some interesting stuff happen. Basically right after the last post, it rained quite well here. The arenas at Ezio’s barn were closed for a day or two which wasn’t an issue. He can have a day or two off. I still needed to go out and give Scarlet his meds though. Off I went to the barn, feeding him, normal things. I walked back with the hose from filling his water. My feet disappear from under me, I head for the ground, hitting my shoulder on the muck bucket on the way down.
So yeah. Dramatic I know. But I slipped, fell and bruised the shit out of my tailbone. Felt like I’d knocked the breath out of me for a bit there. I was able to get up and get myself home but wow was everything painful. I had issues walking without any pain for a while. I definitely couldn’t ride so I asked Trainer J to ride him instead of me. So I fell on Wednesday. She rode him Friday and Saturday.
Sunday I took him out to free longe him. He was pretty good so I tried longing him with the line on Monday. That went okay. I finally got back on on the 15th. It definitely hurt but I was on. I kept him to the gate area while doing our little ride since he’s been spookier lately and I was pretty sure I couldn’t handle a spook buck. I couldn’t place my weight normally since the pressure going up my spine would hurt. I ended up perched on the saddle and I was pretty pleased with Ezio. He gave me some unsure of this ears but he didn’t freak out. He didn’t give me great work but I wasn’t able to swing with him so I didn’t blame him for that.
The next day was incredibly windy, gusts at like 30 mph so I did absolutely nothing with him. Then the next day, Thursday, I longed him a bit and changed to his bit to the new bit I’d picked up. Trainer J rode him that Friday. She thinks the bit is okay, but a little big for him. I ordered the next size down and have received it, but I haven’t tried it on him yet. I’ll get to it.
I got on him by myself that Saturday and rode. It was less painful than when I got on on Tuesday but still hurt. I managed to stay on for around 20 minutes. We got maybe 60% of a swingy walk since I couldn’t swing with him. But it went well enough given how I was feeling. Sunday I had a lesson and I felt roughly the same as the previous day. We got some okay walk work but had a good discussion on how we aren’t seeing a ton of improvement because he needs miles in this new way of going. Once he’s more comfortable and used to going about in a relaxed manner, things will be easier.
The next week was Thanksgiving week so Ezio got some extra time off as I had family visiting the day of and after. The day before, I tried to ride but Ezio was spooking and evading everything when I was tacking up. Since this was before work, I didn’t have the time to work through both the evading and get on and ride. So we put the tack on and off a bunch of times and then he got to stand tied. It was incredibly frustrating. I went out Saturday after thanksgiving prepared to longe and then ride him. But only longing happened. We went into the round pen and as soon as I let him off the lead, he sprinted around the edge of the pen for 15 minutes. It took a whole half hour before he had returned to a level where I thought I could walk him back. I don’t blame him for that day, but it was another non-riding day in a bad week, so it left me quite frustrated and feeling useless.
On my lesson on Sunday, I asked Trainer J to leave her helmet on since I’d been having issues with him and I’d like her as backup, just in case. I ended up being able to handle it all, but Ezio was quite pushy on the ground. I had to really go at him to get him to wake up and pay attention to me. The main thing was he was attempting to bite at me or grab his reins instead of focusing on work. Trainer J offered a new trick to see if we could address the biting. It is to flail around and slap your thighs when he moves in to bite. It startles him quite a bit versus smacking him makes it a bitey face game. So far, it really seems to be working. We did get some trotting in that lesson. Only a little bit but it was a lot more than I’d gotten in several weeks at that point.
For December, I’m putting him into three days a week training. I went out of town the first weekend and I’ll be out of town for Christmas as well so the three days a week allows him to still be worked while I’m out of town. And the other weeks I’ll be able to get two lessons. I also have regained a half an hour in my morning schedule by handing off my second team at work to the newbie. So no more 9am meetings. That extra half hour is going to be so key. I’ll actually have some wiggle room to work through antics and still be able to be on for 15-20 minutes for a good short ride.
The Horse Dream 