Self defeating

Made today our first real dressage school of the year and it immediately went off the rails. Pulled the ball out to see if we could bop it around from the ground and under saddle to break up real work. He was okay with it from the ground while I fed him cookies, and he was okay with standing next to it once I was mounted and feeding him cookies, but I needed to move it back between jumps to get it off the rail so we could ride and he had a complete anxiety induced meltdown--running backwards, thinking about going up, launching sideways, flipping his head, etc etc. He never did go all the way up which was a win because that's a big thing with him so small wins.

Once the ball was out of the way, we just stood there next to it with my reins on the buckle until he took a breath and dropped his head, and then walked off on his own more relaxed. It took a lot of walking around with changes of direction before I felt his back soften enough to move on to the trot.

The trot was fine, but I already felt defeated at this point so when I started asking for smaller (like 15m) circles and his shoulder went flying off into the hinterlands, I was kind of like, "What do I do now? I already fucked this up, now I need to ask him to actually work and I feel like it's going to bring the anxiety back which is EXACTLY WHAT I'M TRYING TO AVOID AND ALREADY FAILED AT."

Decided a timeout was in order and focused on square on the bit halts instead. Did lots of those both directions with tons of candy doled out.

Moved on to the sitting trot and constantly vacillated between "Does this feel sloppy because I haven't ridden in awhile or because it sucks?"

Worked on more halts. When in doubt, just don't move.

Finished with a couple SI to HI both directions because he was FUCKING SUPER about them. More candy doled out and I was able to get off not feeling like I completely 100% ruined him. Maybe only like 75%. But he was chill and cocked a leg in the aisle after the ride so hopefully the obscene amount of cookies I kept pumping into him helped out.

It wasn't a great mental ride for me, and I feel like I took it worse than Opie did which isn't a bad thing I guess. The ball is going to be in the ring from now on though because it's a silly thing to get worked up over, and since I bought it I want to actually play with it eventually.