Every other day

There's a show every single weekend of August. There's a two day show, a show across the border in PA, and even a show on a Thursday. Aside from the planning on when to dole out the UlcerGard, keeping Opie feeling fit and fresh for the entire month is a massive focus. 

Fortunately, at this point, there's not a lot of new things to jam into our skills belt. Everything always needs polish of course, but it's not like, "Oh, shit, I have one week to learn how to do a half pass and I'm going to need every single one of those days." That means keeping an every other day schooling schedule looks like it's going to work pretty well for us. 

off days spent being forced into the great outdoors
even though nature is not your favorite.

On Wednesday I rode him in the double again. SI good, half pass good, turns on the haunches good when they want to be (I don't fucking know at this point they just really fucking hate me), and flying changes are clean as a whistle.

Flying changes are also now performed thirty feet above the ground at all times.

For fucking real tho, what a rodeo. I mean, yay, great, glad the concept has clicked and we're changing back to front on the spot, but holy shit. Landing with one stirrup and clinging to the side of your horse because you just shot skyward to get them surely cannot be a good thing. And also THAT SEEMS LIKE SO MUCH MORE WORK, OPIE. 

But whatever, it is what is at this point. The entry has been sent, we're just going to call this a fact finding mission LOL.

waiting for his german horse muffin after a shower.
it's hard being opie.

This morning he went back in the snaffle and was definitely softer and better in the lateral work after being worked in the double. Right off the bat, however, I had to rein him right in to keep him from walking off with me in the TOH. He just wants to go fast or get lateral to get out of actually doing it, and then when I managed to get the feet slowed down and doing what they're supposed to do he braces and throws his head. Work with me here, bro, I hate them, too. 

The canter work was running through the patterns from 2-2 and 2-3 mostly to make sure we still had a counter canter and could go across the short diagonal and do a simple change instead of exploding into a flying change. Check, check, and check. 

At stretchy trot to cool out, a long cold shower, and then back outside for a few more hours until he got to come in early and park in front of his fan because we're back in a heat wave. 

We don't ride until nearly 5pm Sunday which is the shits. With the heat, I'm planning on bringing him in at 10 for his cold bath and braiding, and then leaving him in front of his fan until we leave in the early afternoon so that I hopefully have some energy to draw from. Good news is he's gotten to be mostly a grown up about Mr Tappy so if we have to use him, so be it. But I'd prefer to have a horse going forward on his own without me doing all the work.