Fast and Furious

I ended up doing some trial and error with riding Opie and his stitched up face. The area around the stitches was juuustt swollen enough that the cheek piece/bit hanger rubbed against the bottom stitch no matter what bridle I tried. So the first day I threw the neck rope on him, did a little w/t, and then reminded him of his useless trick of standing front feet on the mounting block.

After that I clipped reins onto his flat halter and did a couple rides that way.

He honestly was much better for that than I thought he was going to be as he can plod along on a trail ride in a halter all day, but he's been pretty resistant to any sort of nose pressure in the past. Maybe that whole learning how to ride better thing helped out some.

Finally over the weekend I decided to retry the bridle. I snugged the "throat latch" up one more hole and it was just enough to keep the cheek off the stitches. He was good on the Friday, and then Sunday the temperature dropped twenty degrees with 30mph wind. It took me ten minutes to wrangle his wild bronco ass out of the field, and I made the choice to put on his thunder shirt and stick him on the longe before even getting him tacked up because his brain was visibly melting out of his head on the crossties.

After a good ten minutes of running and snorting and leaping, he felt sane enough to get on. He started off well enough, but at the canter left he kept blowing through my outside aids and trying to be act like, "You're going to make me change and that makes me SO ANXIOUS I can't possibly keep cantering anymore!!!1!"

Yeah, nah. Get over yourself, changes were never on the menu, get the fuck off my leg and straighten up. We had a little CTJ and suddenly could circle like a normal horse.

He felt crooked, but I imagine even skipping one week of lessons has made me crooked AF again so here we are. Counter canter helped straigten the canter and a straighter trot followed.

When I got home around 12:30 I still hadn't heard an update on the puppy that was supposed to be here Saturday afternoon before things went off the fucking rails. In the end, at 1pm Hubby and I jumped in the car and drove 5 hours to MA, grabbed the puppy ourselves, and turned around to get home at 10:15pm.

introducing ferdinand magellan
aka ferdi!

With the addition of a puppy, it's meant zooming through barn chores in the morning, coming home to let him out of his crate so he can party until he can't keep his eyes open, and then run back to the barn for a ride within a two hour window so he doesn't have to be in the crate too long.

Yesterday Opie was perfect for this set up. W/t/c, sitting trot, stretchy trot. His medium trot is feeling  AMAZING after making sure the canter is straight and collected and forward, and then he's more than happy to bounce around in a stretchy trot to finish. A++ lots of GHM awarded before I hurried back home.

Today he was pretty resistant to bending right so I ended up picking up a dressage whip and giving him two taps with it. That, of course, sent him spiraling, but I ignored him and just kep insisting on the right bend until he got a grip on his life and did what I was asking. We skipped the left canter because that took some time to sort out, but the sitting trot was super followed by the best medium trot he's ever given me. We were both soaked at that point. Fortunately it was warm enough for a quick shower afterwards.

The short, focused rides seem to do well for us. It gives me less time to get distracted and inevitably fuck things up. I know we're going to have some serious corrections for DL to sort out on Friday though!

Unrelated, on Saturday morning I volunteered/audited my GMO's Vincent Flores symposium again. Unlike last year which was amazing, this year almost no one braved the shitty weather and it turned into more lowkey lessons for each rider which was honestly kind of underwhelming from an auditing point of view. I did pick up these pieces:

• SI is the same movement at 2nd as it is at Int, the only difference is collection. 
• Work on the gaits instead of the movement. 
• It takes two sessions to teach SI but it takes two years to teach the collection.
• I only give them a long rein at the end or if they've done something significantly amazing. If they walk on the long rein all the time they think every time you pick up the contact they go to trot or canter and then they jig in the walk. They need to always be working even if they're taking a break.