Dental and Jumping

Yesterday Opie finally had his teeth done. He was a little over a month overdue for his one year routine visit, but with the 'rona it seemed like something that could be pushed back until things started "normalizing" again.

LOL IT WASN'T.

walkabout after our stretchy ride after our dental

Her observations were:

• He's missing two bottom incisors; they never developed. Looking back at the first picture I took when we discovered his retained baby teeth, you can tell he only has four. So why didn't the first dentist I used notice and comment on this, and why didn't his current dentist notice that last year? 
• Because he doesn't have all his teeth down there, his upper teeth are hanging out all by their lonesome with no one to talk to which is causing him to develop an overbite. She was able to remedy this by filing down the front teeth for him and getting a good grind again, but that will have to be done for him with an every-six-months appointment instead of the usual year. 
• That's fine because she'll have to come out on a more regular basis anyway to keep track of:
• The bony lump on one of his bottom incisors that she had never seen before and had no idea what it was, and...
• His obvious onset of EOTRH. AT SEVEN YEARS OLD. 

What a mess. She hinted x-rays in the fall would probably be in order to see how far the EOTRH has progressed, but she still has twenty horses left in the barn to get to, so if she thinks he's looking worse in a hurry, we'll do those sooner. 

same, bro

The good news is, he's eating great, he's not bothered by his bits, and--most importantly--he can eat his carrots without trouble. 

Speaking of bits, I put his slow twist back on his figure eight, finally replaced my missing rein stops so I can use my running again, and saddled Sir Psycho Pants for a jump school this afternoon. I kept everything super small again--mostly 2' with a couple 2'3"--in case we had to have another rage monster showdown.

As soon as I asked him to pick up the trot, he shot off in the grossest, speediest sewing machine trot with his head in the air. Nah, sir. You're schooling Third. You can trot like a Training level horse to warm up. A quick CTJ when he tried to disagree, and we set off into some big figure eights before settling.

"IT'S JOMPIES TIME, BITCHES"

The first jump he was behind my leg, chose an awful distance, and launched. I backed him up and came around again with more leg. Much better.

The next few jumps were kind of the same while we figured each other out again. We finally got on the same page--if you're soft, I'm soft. You want to blow through my half half and charge the fence where you make a terrible distance choice and jump like a fucktard? I will rip your face off. Most of the work was really good for coming back into it though. I was able to ride forward and trust him to stay soft. No thoughts of stopping at the dreaded green rails. Some fun jumper turns and related lines. 

We both got tired in a hurry though. Going from rainy and windy 60* to full sun and no breeze 80* overnight isn't fun for anyone. Getting tired made him start chipping and jumping awful, so we rallied and I got him cruising to finish on a line with two good efforts. 

The best part was my leg didn't budge an inch the whole time. I'm glad that seems to have been a one time occurrence.

glad you're back on the bandwagon, traitorous lower leg.

Hopefully we get to do some trail riding this weekend if the weather doesn't storm on us. I got my very own western saddle today so we can do some barrels otherwise. I can't want to park my ass in a seat that my ass actually fits in. Not gonna miss ya, Hubby's saddle.