Look At This Horse

He's out here doing stuff!

Like warming up with no head bob:

Cantering to the left better than the right because we like to change our strong direction on the daily:

He did struggle quite a bit with the right lead on Sunday:

He hadn't been ridden in over a week because of the heat, so he was feeling lit for his first ride back. This mostly came out in the walk--aka the jiggity jig. I try to redirect to something else instead of just picking a fight about continuing in a straight line and still not walking. This means we do a lot of TOH which, over the winter, he finally got the hang of not pivoting or crossing over behind:

He's still braced because he was lit but look at those little hind feeties doing their job properly.

We also ran through our first full length test start to finish since...August of last year? I'm still aiming for a show at the end of the month doing First, but we all know how planning and horses goes lolol. Regardless, 1-1 is a super friendly little test so we started with that one.

As soon as Opie turned up the CL he was like, "Awwwyisss." He was still a little tightly wound at this point, and he was all-in to channeling it into doing a dressage test because THAT IS HIS JOB AND HE LOVES A JOB FULL SEND BITCHES.

As soon as we whipped through the corner, I could feel him waiting to see what test we were doing. "Are we zooming across the diagonal? No, she says go straight. This must be the one we go into SI in for then. Wait, why is she still saying just go straight?!"

Dude was ready to throw down a Third Level test and all I wanted was a little tritty trotty down the long side so we could make a little loop-di-doo and head back the way we'd come to do it again. His stretchy circle sucked, but he didn't completely take over and zip away so that went better than I thought. His walk immediately wanted to be a jig so I got quite rude with him and made him halt before heading into our "free walk". 

Everything was messy and zoomy and barely under control, but you know what? We both had fun doing the thing again. There's a lot of cleaning up to do that really only comes from test riding, and I am A-OK with that. 

We ran through it again on Monday and while still too quick--especially through the transitions--it was a lot cleaner. This morning we did 90% walking. In and out of the free walk approximately ten million times without anticipating. Then we did a real stretchy trot with his little nose poked out and dragging on the ground. If we can keep those two things tomorrow we'll be in business!

I did end up ordering more meds to have on hand. Those should be here tomorrow, and his follow up vet appointment is Friday. He was pretty trippy the whole ride Sunday. The footing wasn't the best so it could be that--and he's felt fine since then--but I definitely want to have meds on hand to nip any flare-ups in the bud so he doesn't get the chance to get bad again. Fingers crossed!