Brake Checked

A light week of working on my positioning kept Opie from revisiting his Spring Stupids. Making sure I put his brain thunder shirt on might have helped, too. And then I gave both of us a fun day and set up four trot poles down one long side and three 2' bounces down the other.

He was good for the poles, but wanted to run into the bounces--which of course they do not allow you to do which is what makes them so wonderful lol. He finally got things sorted out to the left, really lifting his shoulders and bouncing instead of boinging through. To the right he was convinced he couldn't get in there without going full steam ahead, so I made him trot in and that worked out well. We wrapped up by trotting into the bounces, cantering out, staying straight all the way to the end of the ring, back down into the trot, and through the trot poles. Rinse and repeat a few times each direction. Definitely an exercise I'll use again, it was hard work for him while staying fun. 

For our lesson the next day we got tons of compliments at the trot. She was like, praise Jesus you're finally figuring this shit out! So we moved on to the canter which was a mess, and decided to push that off for another day to get it sorted. 

I'm focusing so much of sitting in the middle of the saddle and pulling my right shoulder back and sinking into the seat (and on and on) that I keep blocking him with different parts of my body and fuck knows if I can pinpoint where that is. However I know I'm now also really bad about following evenly with both reins/arms/elbows. My left elbow needs to come back about ten feet which it doesn't want to do because when I pull my right shoulder back my left elbow goes forward. 

BEING CROOKED IS APPARENTLY MY SPECIALITY.

The shits is that one the way home--having already had a bit of a hairy trailer ride between the rain/snow/hail and absurd wind--a woman blew through a stop sign on a cross road and I had to brake check Opie to avoid hitting her. I felt him scramble around, but I was in sight of the barn so kept going to get him unloaded. 

Fortunately he already had a PEMF appointment scheduled so he got worked on while I waited for the vet to come stitch his face up.

Also fortunately he just kicked off his month of ulcergard so that went nicely with a week of SMZs and a couple days of Bute. He looked stiff/sore behind when I longed him quick on Sunday, but he looked perfectly fine this morning.

I'll get on him tomorrow for a light ride to see where he's at. He felt okay enough to try to double barrel the shit out of his friend in turnout this morning at the very least.