Fishtailing

Metaphorically and literally lolz. Such is life with horses.

Opie got his deep tissue massage last Monday, and obviously the main issue was the sore lumbar area. Actually, I guess I could say delightfully his main issue was the lumbar area. Everything else felt pretty standard -- a little sore in the TMJ which has always been him, and some soreness in the pecs which is always and forever him. Other than that, he was in mighty fine shape!

KG pinpointed the specific spot that was bothering him the most to just above his last rib on the right side, so chances are he popped that rib out. A little manipulation, a little coaxing, and some good old fashioned magic fingers digging in there had him feeling much softer. Even so, I did four days of Robaxin following the massage. By the end of the week, he finally had a happy back again. 

we were also assigned this SI stretch which he is
OBSESSED with.
video here for an explanation

Good for him because he ended up getting dumped right back into full, never-ending work. 

I've been slowly creeping back into feeling like a normal human being now that I've finished steroids which means I'm kind of sort of ready to ride seriously again. (Still iffy on if I'll be able to breathe the whole ride, but it's getting there.) Just in time because my lack of riding while sick meant almost all of Opie's rides were coming from the people that lesson on him. And while MB is a very good instructor, she can't turn low level amateurs into neurotic Thoroughbred that loves taking advantage of people to get out of using himself correctly whisperers. So Opie was out there living his best crooked bully life, clocking along, conning people into letting him go however he wanted while making a perfectly pleasant picture. And I know MB tries to bully him right back into being correct, but there's only so much someone from the ground can do when the riders can't/won't make the corrections. 

stretch out, you naughty creature

It has been tedious getting him back on track. He is the king of what I call microaggressions. Every step he's trying to see what he can sneak by you, and if you don't immediately shut it down, the inch you just allowed him turns into 800 miles. 

He had to relearn how to get the fuck off my left leg. And then my right leg. And then you do not jig when I pick up my reins after a break. You do not giraffe when I shorten my reins. You hold the counter canter. Etc etc etc....

when we're done stretching out, you keep marching

After several quiet rides where I mostly focused on getting him straight again so he'd release his back, earlier this week I put it to him and asked him to really hold himself accountable. He started off feeling so shitty that I actually got off and put him on the longe thinking he was broken. Surprise, he wasn't, he looked great. He just didn't wanna. 

But then I said, you're gonna, and when we came out the other side, I suddenly had a trained horse again. Thank fuck.

this was the first time in 2 weeks i'd cantered and i couldn't
breathe afterwards it was the worst

For my lesson this morning, he was tired. Even though the work wasn't technically hard or went on for very long (because physically I simply cannot), I never ever ride him that many days in a row. Fortunately all I wanted to work on was the ability to go across the diagonals in the outdoor while maintaining straightness instead of feeling like I was playing ping pong with his haunches. That ended up being mostly worked on through the walk.

Forever and always, MB had us going back and forth from the renvers to the SI. He can't be dramatic about it. He can't get overbent in the neck. He can't cheat and wing his haunches around instead. Quiet, straight, correct. 

This made Opie angry. It did not make me angry. I Zen Ninja my way through his tantrums. If he got quick, we halted. If he got mad in the halt, he could throw his tantrum, but I was not engaging. (MB joked during one of these tantrums he walked out of super well after that we needed to tell Anne Gribbons the next time we went to one of her clinics that we find sideways piaffe works much better for collection than her go-to of normal piaffe. #ragemonster) If my leg went on, it stayed on until I got the response I was asking for. Eventually he figured out that I wasn't going to let him get his way, and suddenly he was able to do the Very Hard Thing I was asking for -- that being walking straight across the diagonal. 

having a get off my leg talk

Our left lead canter was good. MB reminded me that when I got the neck straight, that was my cue to ask for more forward because it meant the hind legs were where they're supposed to be. 

The right lead canter was its usual discussion. We did a couple of w/c transitions because he wanted to get very hoppy in them, and then the canter felt like riding a pogo stick, even when I got into half seat and tried to get him to go out. So back to the walk to reestablish straightness and loading the hind end. Eventually we got there off a 10m circle which is one of the best cheat codes for Opie. 

The canter from there got super lovely. Definitely under powered because he was tired, but straight which is all I wanted for the day. We finished getting a super duper long diagonal where the rhythm stayed metronome and the track stayed razor straight. 

i am soooo proud of this pic because it's mid-reinback
WITH HIS HEAD IN FRONT OF THE VERTICAL!!!!
getting too deep has been the bane of one of his otherwise top movements
so this was such a huge win for him. 

He obviously gets tomorrow off, and then I need to get serious about setting up a schedule for the both of us where I'm riding him enough to cancel out uneducated riders without making him tired. Thankfully the fitness of the Thoroughbred comes along with the questionable brain cells.

Just kiddinggg

We are not back in action, that turned into a total lie.

Whomp whomp.

My sickness turned into COVID which saw itself out by leaving me with bronchitis. Rude. As such, breathing is a real struggle which doesn't really lend itself to physical activities like riding. 

For my lesson last Thursday, I showed up in riding clothes fully intending to push through, even if it was just a low key work on the lateral stuff at the walk ride. Instead I had to keep sitting down to catch my breath while grooming and MB put a training ride on him instead.

This ended up working well because she was able to affirm that he feels (spoiler alert: felt LOLZ) much better after the hock injections and he was ready to go back to full send work when I was. 

zoomies while cooling out at the trot

I'd been struggling with his neck positioning while riding, and she was able to clear that up for me as well. In summation: less is best, as always. I was trying to make sure he was connected to the outside rein, and it felt like that's what I was doing, but then looking at video I would actually have him too far tipped to the outside making his neck crooked. But if I tried to think inside bend, I'd end up doing way too much inside neck. She took a picture of his neck while on him to show me where the "bend" should be - basically, I should barely be able to see the inside cheek piece of his bridle. 

To the right, he wants to tilt his head so it will feel a little more dramatic to the inside to get him straight. But it all comes back to her most favorite exercise for us, the renvers to SI. When I change to bend to go from one to the other, I can't actually ride the change or I make it go crazy and piss Opie off. I just have to let it happen. Same thing with the neck positioning. Just let it happen, the adjustments are so miniscule. 

Friday, I gave myself a ton of time to get ready and was able to climb aboard for the first time in a week. I spent a ton of time doing walk serpentines, focusing on neck positioning. MB's explanation helped a lot so that was a win.

As always, we also worked on the walk-canter transitions. I think we're finally starting to get rid of the jiggy anticipation while still being able to collect and sit.

me: barely alive.
opie: doing the work anyway.

I've been playing with adding turns on the haunches in when he feels my outside leg and anticipates the canter transition because leg means more than one thing stop guessing and listen, sir.

(You're welcome for the Pivo clip. It followed me the whole time, except I didn't wipe off my camera when I stuck it on there so the zoom footage is all through a pocket sweat filter. Can't win.)

It was only a 20 minute ride, but we hit on the two main things from the training ride the day before so calling it a win.

He had Saturday off because sick, and then I tried to rally and ride him Sunday but I couldn't breathe through the grooming again. (It was at this point I finally caved and went to Urgent Care where they loaded me up with meds and an inhaler #bless) Which worked out anyway because he was back sore AGAIN. And when I went to stick him on the longe untacked in his halter to give him a stretch, he was short on the RH. Broooooooooo.

Fortunately the deep tissue massage body worker the barn uses was on the schedule to be here all day day and she's able to fit Opie in this afternoon. Hopefully that helps him out. We'll try some methocarb from there if it doesn't, and if that doesn't work, the vet is on the schedule to be back out on the 30th for the minis so I can add on to that. But hopefully it doesn't come to that. I have to put my cat we've been trying to keep alive since November down tomorrow, and I have to tell you, I am tapped out on taking care of animals.

would never let anyone see him enjoy cuddles, don't tell!

Back in action

As expected, April has started off at a glacial pace. In good news though, this was the least eventful recovery he's ever had after his hock injections -- a week after he got them done, he was fully sound and back to being ridden. I still took it easy on him to ease him back into it, especially since before the injections he was barely doing anything thanks to his back soreness.

fortunately he's got a body worker with all the toys

I've done three rides on him since then, one of which lasted all of seven minutes to assess soundness. 

The second was thirty minutes with ninety percent of the work focused on getting him travelling straight. 

He's the most crooked horse on the planet on a good day, and he reverts to full gumby, drunk sailor when he's been off the Straight or Else regime. You know the metaphor where you stick your finger in a hole in the dam to plug a leak and another leak immediately shoots out, forever and ever? That's Opie's body. You corral one wayward section and a different one slips out of your grasp, forever and ever. If this horse has taught me nothing else, it's how important being straight is. 

pivo and i continue to fight every time i use it. one day i will
figure its bitch ass out.

like, why can it be normal on this side of the ring but not on the
other side (the pic above this) when it's parked directly at X?

On Friday we did ride number three, this time in the double. The poor double last got used for the two seconds I pulled it out to take Opie's year end pics, and it was covered in dust and feeling very neglected. It proved its worth for the ride though, as allll the straightness issues I dealt with in the previous ride, especially in the right lead canter, immediately went away. I'm sure some of that is that this horse is very well schooled at this point in his life so things come back quicker, but ugh. The double. It is a good friend of Opie's. It's rarely the right choice for him at shows, I've discovered, as he gets so tense in the ring one ounce of pressure on the curb is his excuse to blow up, but it is SUCH a good schooling tool for us. 

We worked on our SI and HI, trying to remember all the points of contact from our last lesson with LB. His bounce per ounce is back with his go go juice on board, and the trot was especially lovely. 

We also worked hard on the walk-canter transitions, trying to get the feeling of the pi/pa without actually doing the pi/pa (obvi not really throwing down pi/pa here folks, it's the feeling of super collected sitting and bouncing to load the hind end and launch into the canter. Such an amazing tool we picked up for him over the winter.). This is hard for Opie because getting him lit while keeping the lid on is a fine line. I tried to redirect and do some turns on the haunches when he got too up and down anticipating, because the outside leg going on asks for the canter, but also asks him to turn so him having to take a second to see which I was asking for was a good distraction to bring him back to planet earth. 

And then the death plague hit our house and Hubby and I spent all weekend comatose on the couch in between hacking our lungs up. Hopefully this week gets us back into a more normal schedule. Our lesson is this Thursday so maybe I'll attempt to fight with the stupid pivo again to get some footage for a blog post. 

Or it might be the day I finally mow the stupid thing down in rage. Stay tuned!