More of the Same

Scarlet is still doing great. He is his total normal self, jigging in the cold and really wanting to go eat a ton of grass. So whatever it was seems to have been temporary. I’m not questioning it. Him being as sound as he is capable of right now is very helpful for my sanity.

Ezio has still had an unfortunately inconsistent spring. March did not bring much less rain with it. So our riding has been inconsistent still. We’ve had a couple of good moments though. He’s shown a better ability to come back to riding sanity shortly after the arenas opened post rain.

I’ve hopped on him at least two times after the rain but post longing days and felt that he had too much underneath me for a good ride. But he has also been able to hold himself together for a 20 minute walk ride. Being able to hold himself together is definitely a big step forward for him. I’m pretty proud of that.

We’ve also been able to work through feelings when he does have them. Being able to come back from a tantrum is great progress. He isn’t fully losing his brain.

We’ve been doing a fair amount of trot transitions to the left each ride with a lot of extra loose rein walking for more relaxation. He’s really picking it up and leaning into the relaxing. I’m hoping to move us to just loose rein walking as a “break” between trot sets as I don’t want to always have to have a long walk break to regain his chill between. The right trot is still a work in progress. I’ve only been asking him to do one small trot circle being very overbent. He can’t throw his neck or shoulder around when we’re on such a small circle with the bend. I do plan on either doing more transitions or making the circle bigger but I never felt like pushing him in the short spots of riding we had between rain.

Then I unfortunately got very sick around mid march. Which meant I couldn’t ride. I was trying to make my lungs end up on the outside of my body so I stayed away from the barn for several days. When I was able to get back out, it was for a very piss and vinegar filled longe and then he also got longed by my trainer the next day because he was very excited. The theme continued for most of that week.

I did have one nice ride on him last Friday where we needed to use the front arena instead of the back one. I had gotten a folding step stool so that I could mount from there since he wasn’t comfortable standing near the fence in that arena. I was still coughing pretty badly so I took my time with ground work and getting up and off the stool. I wanted him to be super chill before I tried anything. We did get there and had a nice relaxed 5 minutes before he noticed the ditch near the arena eat a horse. That took another 5 minutes of small circles and blowing before he mostly relaxed to where I could hop off without if feeling like I was bailing. More ground work followed and he mostly got himself under control. I was pretty proud of him that day.

Which made my Saturday lesson all the more frustrating. I had planned on riding so I went out early to longe, just in case. I was still coughing after all. Longed him for 30 minutes before the start of my lesson rolled around. He was an ass. A complete, utter asshole. He was running away from me on the longe, turning his ass in and trying to run off to the outside. I even stuck his butt in the corner and did something like a 3m circle with the fence on two sides and he still tried to run off. I eventually handed him off to my trainer and she worked with him for another half an hour. He was trying all the same stuff with her. She blocked him and kept blocking him. It’s unusual for him to hold so hard to a bad idea but he really held onto it that day. It took over an hour total of working with him before he started to make good decisions.

I don’t love having to be so loud with him like we did on Saturday but he brought it upon himself. Nothing we were asking was hard. He wouldn’t even walk a circle around us. That’s kinda the lowest level of ask there. But I’m glad I decided to longe because I do not want to know what that would have been like under saddle.

I’ll be heading to Japan in two weeks so I’m likely not to get much riding in between then and now due to yet more rain. A barn friend will be taking care of Scarlet while I’m gone. And Ezio is going to get bootcamp while I’m gone! I’m very excited for him.