Grand Champion of the vet

Opie had his spring vet appointment on Monday, and we crossed all the spring crossables off the list.

• He did, in fact, need his teeth floated again.
• Dr A (our usual vet; I had added Opie on to someone else's appointment last month because they do a dental discount every February and I wanted to split the barn call) stuck her hand in his mouth and immediately felt a couple spots that weren't smooth, and once she had the speculum in, she basically ended up doing a full float.
• He has a little bit of a parrot mouth that causes his bite to not line up perfectly, and she said that especially was the likely culprit for the sideways head chewing -- not going ham on the last float (or as ham as possible without grinding his teeth to useless smooth stubs) was pinching his cheek folds. 
• Opie notices and feels everythingggg, so doing the bare minimum simply does not work on him. Again, it was single digits when the last vet came so none of her battery powered lights worked and she was using her phone's flashlight, but at that point maybe call it quits and reschedule?

no cow cuds since this float fortunately

• She agreed his back was likely sore from the hocks needing to get done, and it is feeling better to palpation now.
• He actually trotted super sound in hand, and then she flexed him, and we stuck him on the longe, and he went lame in the RH.
• "I don't mind seeing that at all. Now I feel like we're doing these injections for something!"

snoozing off his elephant sized sleepy dosage.
he metabolizes sedatives sooo fast.

• I stuck him on the longe for two seconds yesterday to see what the progress was, and he blessedly looked the best he ever has at this point after injections.
• Admittedly the bar is very low. He was still lame.
• But in a shuffle-y, poke along way, not in a Dead Fucking Lame way. 
• This is huge improvement from past years!
• He might react less dramatically to biologics than he does to the steroids we inject him with, but I've heard more "I didn't see any improvement afterwards" stories about Prostride etc than I've heard success stories, and quite frankly I don't have the money to gamble that it would make a difference for him and not still give him a slow recovery time. So we wait out the two-ish weeks it usually takes for him to come back to feeling his best again, and we get eleven months of really, really good results afterwards.
• And like I said, he's never looked this good this soon so maybe all the strength I've packed onto him in the past year is helping him recover faster. Fingers crossed. 

doing important modeling work in the meantime

In other news, over the weekend we finally got to attend our rescheduled year end awards banquet. Opie was Horse of the Year at Third Level, and was also the Third Level champion in the schooling show division. (Based solely on being the only person doing Third at schooling shows. A bonus for trying to get more ring time to relax the rage monster.)

He may cost lots of money, and we're already going on weeks of not doing a real ride, but at least he brings home giant ribbons!

Nothing but a dirty horse

Not one single productive thing has happened since my last post. Opie had to give a lesson last Friday, and when I groomed him in the evening before going away for the weekend, he was so back sore he tried to sit down when I curried him. 

So that wasn't great.

I gave him some bute that night and set some out for his morning feed hoping that when I got back on Monday to look him over he'd be improved with the drugs and rest.

He was not.

Not only was he not, he was now also dropping big cow cuds of his Stress Free alfalfa even though he just got his teeth floated by the vet a month ago, and the stupid bully in his paddock had chomped two new big bites into his butt which meant more holes to patch in his clothes. 

Needless to say, I had a quick menty b to everyone before heading home, as one does.

has been doing a lot of snacking on the barely
green grass

MB said to have the vet who's already coming out next week for vaccines and hocks to check his mouth (same practice, different vet) because that's on them. 

My saddle fitter said to try front shims to get his saddle more stable (as the back soreness was right where the panels sit) because she intentionally left it a little wider than she wanted when she reflocked it - and she told me this at the time - because Opie threw a shit fit when she flocked it to make sense on paper.

Opie's body worker squeezed us in for a PEMF session yesterday.

he got a bath yesterday when it was 74* and we
were waiting for his most favorite person (pemf)
to arrive

and of course he immediately rolled when
i turned him back out

The PEMF helped a lot, especially combined with a weighted heating pad and Surpass, so today I felt comfortable enough to try the saddle with the shims added to his Mattes to see how that felt.

He was absolutely feral, but it was hard to tell at first if it was from getting a week off or because he felt better or worse. Eventually though, his tongue came out and I couldn't get him moving forward which is his tell when he feels like the saddle is too tight and pinching him - even though it is literally not actually doing those things, he's just the most claustrophobic animal alive when it comes to his saddle. So I jumped off, pulled the shims, and we went for a trail ride with MB to try to reset his brain so I could tell how he felt back in the old setup.

Only we did one lap of the pastures and MB wanted to wrap up her ride, but Opie flat out refused to go anywhere else but back to the trails. So back to the trails we went on our own. We found a giant puddle to have a splash party in, there were a bunch of trees down in the woods he got to half jump, half clobber over, and his wife came galloping over the fence to say hi.

He was in a much better headspace after all that and we went back into the outdoor to check in on the trot and canter super quick. He felt kind of stabby at the canter, but at least he was quiet and settled. He's very much ready to get his hocks done and that's what it felt like. He was a little sore in the back when I got off again, but he's going to get a full week off from the hocks on Monday so hopefully that will help him out. And I'll see if the vet has any other suggestions for pain relief.

was very pleased to meet me at the gate when i
pulled in to show off how disgusting he was

 Still holding out hope that by mid April things will be normal and I can start looking at shows!

Baby (Forward) Steps

It continues to be one of those winters that things are just stutter skipping along, but while time in the saddle has been more limited than I'd probably like, I'm making the most of it by getting the most education I can. Which is why we find ourselves here again: another lesson post!

in typical thoroughbred fashion, he never ever gets
tired under saddle. but then afterwards we are very sleepy lol

But first! I need to share some exciting news!

I think I've finally reliably unlocked the ability to ride forward in the trot in the indoor.

Right off the bat! (After warm up of course.) It's okay if I'm the only one that finds this exciting. I can be excited enough for alllll of us. We can even mostly continue to do it with some lateral work thrown in.

The canter is a work in progress. It's hard to build up steam inside as the ring is very small, but we were finally able to venture into the outdoor so I was hopeful that would help my brain. We've been out there twice now, and while we haven't been able to use every inch because drying out from literal feet of snow and ice thawing takes time, it's still more space than inside. 

The first ride was Opie being completely feral with no steering until he got to have a good hand gallop, and then we were able to reel it in and do a teensy bit of productive work -- some good turn on the haunches both ways, and then playing with the quarter turn canter pirouettes. 

Our lesson was also in the outdoor, and we went ahead and started with our hand gallop after a few walk laps that didn't want to remain on the ground. Fortunately that helped clear his tiny brain a little, and our trot - once he got over trying to bolt every time I put my right leg on - was absolutely amazing, no notes. 

I wanted to specifically work on one of the exercises LB had us do in our last lesson, the haunches-in on a circle. Yeah, none of the much harder exercises. Those we've been able to pick apart on our own. I legit could not wrap my brain around the easiest one, and if I couldn't then Opie definitely couldn't.

you know what we can do tho?
halt.

So right off the bat, we couldn't even do a circle. At the walk. Cool cool. 

MB had us go back to her favorite exercise for us, renvers to SI, because if there is one thing about this horse it's that you at no time ever have full control over his shoulders. Once we were able to establish a circle-like shape, she had me ask for the HI. At which point we could no longer go on a circle again lolzzzz. 

There were a couple core problems here. One is my inability to put more than two aids together at once. This exercise needs probably three aids, ones like: steer, bend, your two legs are separate entities (an important thing to remember for later). REALLY ADVANCED STUFF HERE. 

Another problem is I've grown way too reliant on having four arena walls to hold my hand. I used to event, guys. More than that, I used to ride with no arena at all. And now I'm like, WHERE ARE THE LETTERS TO TELL ME WHERE MY CIRCLE IS SUPPOSED TO GO?!? It's absolutely ridiculous.

And finally, we ran into the same problem I was having with the canter halfpass in that I was trying to do too much and overcomplicating things in my head.

MB broke it down into baby steps for me. Establish the circle track. Renvers to SI until I could reliably get him bent correctly on said circle track. Brush the hair with the outside leg to ask the haunches to come in. This is not a dramatic ask or change in track. I don't need to be shoving his whole hind end thirty feet over. Once I got that through my head, it turns out this exercise was much easier to ride. Shocker.

It also did what it was designed to do, which was set him up in much better positioning for the canter departs which is where we headed next. We spent a couple months making him think pi/pa into the canter to help him with collection (which was a great exercise we picked up from an amazing Anne Gribbons clinic we audited over the winter), but now that the collection is there, he needs to skip the pi/pa steps and really jump off the hind end right from the walk. The HI on a circle will be really good homework to help with that. 

The canter was super tho! MB had to keep chiding me to ride more forward, and not let getting him straight take away from the forward, but once we put those together (MB: idk what you changed in your mind to get there, but do it again. Me: I put my inside leg on, too! I have two legs! Who knew! MB: Why do I do this job omfg) the loft he was getting was next level. So exciting. 

lots of stretching breaks forever and always

Which meant that I wanted to try the canter halfpasses again, especially with having more space in the outdoor to ride them. 

I tried to start off thinking less is more, but we quickly realized my nice forward bouncy canter could only go straight and we had no lateral suppleness again. BECAUSE IT'S ALWAYS SOMETHING. 

That turned our exercise in to left halfpass a few steps, 10m circle thinking SI, halfpass again. To the right was halfpass, 10m circle thinking HI, halfpass. It took a hot minute to build up to even being able to steer on our circles, but once we got there the halfpasses were much improved. Another shocker.

We quit there with a ton of homework that we won't have much time to work on until April with the way scheduling is going, but I should be able to sneak in at least one more hardcore ride next week. We're definitely hitting that sweet spot in training between levels where the 3rd level work is feeling super strong and 4th level is feeling in-reach enough to make it fun to work on instead of miserable. 

All haunches, all the time

We had another lesson over the weekend with one of my trainer's trainers, who we should probably give a name, so we'll call her LB. Of course, I wanted to utilize her on the dreaded R-L change and she delivered big time - without us ever touching on the changes, and really doing the majority of our work in the walk. 

Because there are SO MANY AIDS in dressage, and eventually you are expected to use ALL OF THEM AT ONCE. Even if the aid is, "don't do anything" YOU HAVE TO USE THAT DON'T DO ANYTHING AID. 

Ugh, riding is so fucking hard.

I asked if I could go first in the rider rotation this time so I could give Opie his Opie warmup without the eyes of others on us as that is a guarantee to erase everything out of my mind that works and start making senseless shit up (directly correlating to shows, it's a whole thing). Of course, when I went out to get the horse from his field he was in the middle of running laps. His two friends quit when I walked into the field, but Opie was still busy doing Thoroughbred things.

"it's called lightness bitches, look it up!"

the fields had been mostly ice up to this point so
zoomies have been limited.

Sooo my warm up time was spent washing the mud out of his tail and off his chest and stomach and legs and face, and then LB showed up early, so nevermind. 

I ended up sticking to my guns this time though, and LB let me do my thing. She even remarked that he was moving much more freely and more forward in the trot right off the bat (thanks, saddle reflock), and that in the canter I was doing a good job of thinking "lift the saddle, lift the back" and that the canter was really good. 

Quick warm up concluded, we moved on the real work. She asked if we ever tried haunches-in at the canter to help with the changes, which we have not, so that was the first order of business. 

She started us off leg yielding out on a circle, really pushing him out to activate the inside hind and getting him loose laterally. From there we moved in the HI in a straight line. She said we could start by cheating if we needed to and ride the second track and put the shoulders on the rail.

The goal was to get the left hind jumping off of my left leg as this is the leg that's always getting left behind in the change. Then we switched directions and repeated the exercise this way, although she said the counter canter would probably be a more effective exercise for him tracking right (which we do do a lot of). But the leg yielding out tracking right stretches his left side and he really needs the lateral suppleness. HI shows how much he lacks bend, and the HI is the best way to train the bend.

Then she had us trotting on a circle in HI. Yeahhh, we could not do this. 

at all.

It kept being more Head Out than Haunches In, and the front end refused to stay on the circle. She had me thinking of his front end as a cannon - his shoulders are the wheels and the cannon is his neck, and the neck can't move unless the shoulders steer it. But again, this really highlighted how stuck he is in the lateral work, and that will lead directly to weakness in the changes.

Eventually we mercifully abandoned this and switched to square turns in the walk and then the trot. This started off well and then she asked me to "do it the other way" which I took as the other direction. Nah. The other way as in, I was riding them off his haunches and now she wanted them off his forehand. WHO KNEW THERE WAS EVEN A DIFFERENCE WHY ARE THERE SO MANY WAYS TO MAKE A TURN.

We did get a "That was quite well ridden" which from LB is basically saying I'm a genius LOL and were released into the canter. Same at the canter, starting off riding a pirouette type canter off the haunches and then changing to the forehand.

Ooh, his canter got so pretty!!

A little walk break, and then ANOTHER EXERCISE THANK GOD FOR VIDEO SO I COULD GO BACK AND TAKE NOTES IT WAS SO MUCH INFORMATION THIS SHIT IS SO HARD.

Even though my drawing is very clearly labeled and there's no reason you shouldn't understand it flawlessly, I will explain it for you anyway. 

1. Ride a square, splitting the ring in half.

2. Leg yield in towards the square you just rode.

3. HI the opposite direction of the leg yield you just did. 

4. Turn towards the direction of your haunches. 

5. Another square.

6. Leg yield in.

7. Change bend of the haunches.

8. Turn left. 

This starts in the walk, then the trot, then you pick up the canter when you start the HI in and come back to the trot or walk when you get to the next HI to change the bend, and then the end goal is to canter the whole shebang and that change of bend between haunches becomes your change. 

Hopefully that makes sense. We only did the walk because the indoor is too small and quite frankly Opie and I were very confused, but I'm super excited to try this once the outdoor thaws. The principle of it reminded me of a lesson MB took with her other trainer on Opie this fall where she had them leg yielding in at the canter down the long side and then leg yielding out on a 20m circle. Basically, the horse needs to get better about bouncing from leg to leg. 

AND FINALLY! We learned how to.....actually ride a haunches in. Ha, whoopsies. Turns out as we kept breaking down these exercises it was revealed I've not been riding these correctly ever either. Shocking, I know.

In short, simple terms: the ankle asks forward, leg says bend, hips or shoulders control angle of HI or SI, spine controls line of travel. Easy peasy!

being followed around the ring as we went from HI to SI because
it was not, surprisingly, easy peasy for either of us.

She wrapped things up by saying he's athletic enough to do all the work, which again, from LB basically gave us her blessing to aim for GP. But maybe first we try to just get a clean fucking R-L change.

Single Pole Friend

Another week of crawling through this horrible weather - because even though it's finally trying to warm up, all that means is the feet of snow is melting into feet of water when it's not too busy freezing back over again into sheets of ice. We love a NY winter.

it never stopped snowing this year. literally.

Opie had a couple rides leading up to our lesson this morning. We fucked around with the R-L change over the weekend (which was mostly fuckery), and then did a simple stretchy ride on Tuesday with work on the turns on the haunches. 

got a little hacking in before the melt started
and turned the footing to shit

I asked for more work on the R-L change for our lesson because it's got to be a thing or Opie has got to find a new home, so we brought our frenemy the single pole back. I set up Pivo in the corner hoping to get some footage, but in typical Pivo fashion it did not want to play with me and missed about 80% of the ride. I did manage to grab a couple of (crooked) clips when it wasn't staring at the wall tho!

We made it over the pole today! That alone was a huge win lol. Bless him, he tried to figure it out, and he kept coming instead of trying his previous evasions of doing anything but keep coming. They're whacky and weird, but honestly they were way less whacky and weird than usual so we'll call that a Small Win.

Also, side note, the head wag. Opie's had the head wag at times from day one. He's super tricky about the contact and that's kind of what myself, judges, and a couple trainers have always attributed it to. He doesn't do it when he's feeling strong and relaxed. We've gone through different bits over the years and I'm absolutely loving the feeling he gives me in his current one (Bombers Happy Tongue), but MB asked today if I'd ever tried a different bridle on him. She'd read that the Micklem isn't actually comfortable for horses and wondered if that might be contributing to the head wag. I have tried regular snaffles on him - they don't really fit his blocky head, and the Micklem does - and I'd never heard that about the Micklems before. Has anyone else read this?

possibly just wagging his head to better spread the
side eye idk

Anyway, after we finished with our single pole friend on the straight approach, we decided to try it on the diagonal approach. Mostly because I really want him to do this fucking change across the diagonal like he needs to do in a test and it's usually around March that I start going into lowkey panic mode about how quickly show season is approaching. And we brought the pole along because through trial and error we've found that if I have a tangible object to aim at, I ride straighter and more forward which are basically the only components you need for changes. 

Opie started this exercise off FUCKING FERAL. #throwbackthursday to launching me into the air and being completely mental. But MB, in her MB way, was just like, "It's fiiiine! Carry on!" So we did, and eventually we went from aiming in the general direction of the pole and praying to being able to put my right leg on, and then finally I was able to keep my right leg on and ask for the change with the left on the very last pass which fortunately for all our viewing pleasure Pivo deigned to tune in for before returning to staring at the wall.

I still got launched out of the saddle, and it's still not technically correct, but it's soooo much more correct than before! Like, his fucking LH finally blasted off the ground instead of hanging back and watching everything else unfold before deciding if it wanted to come along at some point in the distant future.

So hopefully we're on the right track with those. He's so strong in everything else, literally blowing out of his skin with new muscle and confidence, that it finally feels like if we can just figure out what the missing piece he needs for those is, everything else is going to come together.

And then I'll take him to a show and we'll both forget how to horse lolzzzz.

Tomorrow is our saddle fitting appointment finally, and then Saturday we get to ride with MB's trainer again. That's not going to be a monthly thing for me because $$$ but I was able to swing it again this time, and hopefully she'll be able to give us some more help on the change.

Psychic

Or maybe more appropriately titled "Psycho" because that's what everyone thinks of horse people anyway, and then you tell them you called some random woman halfway across the country to talk to your horse, AND SHE DID. 

#noregrets

Absolutely nothing has happened since our lesson last week - not even our rescheduled saddle fitting appointment - because we're stuck in a cycle of snow and ice and 50mph wind. Which isn't really that different from every single fucking day since Christmas which is that last time we've seen open ground, but the past few days have been especially horrendous. 

i guess that's a lie. opie did get his teeth done, but
even that was routine and boring.

So this seems like the perfect time to ride on the back of Stacie's post contemplating getting an animal communicator for Al and write about Opie's session with Kathy George. Our appointment was probably a year and a half ago at this point, but don't worry. I kept the pages of notes I took! I went with Kathy on the recommendation of one of my friends who had done all four of her horses with Kathy and gave a glowing review.

I will preface all this by saying that I went in not caring either way if she gave me any pertinent or super secret information. I purely wanted the entertainment value. It was $45 for a 15 minute session, and I justified it by telling myself I've spent way more than that on far more stupid shit. Also, leading up to it, everyone in the barn was joking on how many people Opie was going to pick out and say he hates because a sweet, loveable, cuddling precious pookie Opie is not. #ragemonster

I called Kathy at our scheduled appointment time, we talked about the weather for a second (only because my area code is for Illinois and I actually live in NY), and then she asked for his color, age, and name.

Let's jump right in with some bulllletttt pointssss:

• Her first comment was, "Wow! He just ran through the door like Liberace!" Which was hysterical because while Opie is a grumpy old man trapped in a fit young horse body, he feels every emotion to a 10. She said she would describe his whole personality as "flashy." Oh yeah, he likes to give us all the ole razzle dazzle alright lol.
• "I'm first. For everything." -- Opie. "You're not going to ignore him, ever."
• He was super rude at the gate at the last barn. He had to come in first, and he would push other horses off the gate if they were coming in instead of him. And forget trying to give anyone else in the field candy if you weren't also going to give him some, too. He hasn't done any of this once at the new barn. 
• Later in the session she added that "he wants attention all the time. He's like a dog."
• He identifies me as "his person" (which gave me heart eyes because again, he's just got the grumpiest outward personality), and he wants to do a good job for me.

I  specifically asked her if he liked his job as a dressage horse, and if there was anything I could help him with in his work.

• He gets tense in his jaw and neck under saddle which makes the rest of him tense up. 
• "Mom gets annoyed when I do this." Heh, called out for my lack of patience by my own horse over the phone to a random person states away. Kathy told him that she can tell he gets defensive in response and we need to work together.
• He doesn't like to pick his back up....
• True....
• .....and then she followed that up immediately with, "Well Opie, you don't need to be dramatic about everything." And then she told me, "He's very funny, but he is a lot."
• He likes doing dressage, he likes that it helps get his energy out.
• "He's like a star quarterback. I feel like the weaving comes from needing to get his energy out nonstop." He doesn't weave at the new barn either, and literally all of the horses that moved when the barn closed that had issues have done a total 180 so I'm surprised she didn't pick up on the bad juju floating around there lol.

And, of course, I asked about any physical issues he was having which is where we spent most of our time.

• The last third of his foot/the lower pastern in the back felt like it had pressure. 
• We've never xrayed, but it does look like on the RH he might be developing a little ringbone.
• He doesn't like high nails in his back shoes.
• When he swallows, his throat/neck reflexively give him the feeling like he's having a panic attack. 
• He is starting to develop some (super, super small) melanomas along his throatlatch area, but I've had 3 vets from 2 practices check him over in this area and none of them thought they were effecting his breathing. He doesn't ever seem to struggle with this under saddle or while he's romping around so idk.
• He's sore in his sternum, and poll and jaw areas.
• He hates getting his chest buckles done on his blanket which ties in to the sternum, but I don't have the funds to try all the blankets in the world to see if there's a configuration that suits him better.  Sorry, dude.
• We make sure to spend more targeted time with PEMF on his dome piece now.
• Her big takeaway was that he felt "sensitive all over" and she asked if I'd had him tested for Lyme lately. 
• Which was on the list, and a month later we did the test and ended up treating him for it!

The best part of the whole appointment was at the very end when she just started laughing hysterically and she was like, "I told him he just needed to relax, and he SHOUTED back at me, 'I AM RELAXED.'" Opie in a fucking nutshell, I was dying. 

Definitely recommend Kathy, and definitely recommend getting a session done just so you can share it with everyone else. I'd love to have her do Opie again at the new barn because I know there would be so much new stuff. 

Everything Is Hard

I was promised a new exercise for working on the R-L change, and it was indeed laid out for me.

It was one pole. On the rail. Just chilling there.

We never made it to the change, the pole existing proved too difficult.

this canter is getting SO strong tho.
as long as there isn't a pole involved.

Yesterday was the first ride in awhile where I felt like we actually accomplished something so I was excited to go into this lesson. True, I had to ride every. single. step. and focus on controlling every single centimeter of my horse's body, buuuut it kind of turns out the higher you move up the levels the less grace you get in being a spaced out lazy rider. Like, I'm sure we've all heard "Ride half halt to halt halt." Oh, yes. And you legit are half halting every step. This riding thing actually gets harder not easier.

But anyway, on to the lesson.

MB dropped one single ground pole halfway down one of the long sides and was like, "Off you go." Walked it fine, picked up a nice (forward! Trying so hard to be more forward!) warm up trot, and promptly lost the rhythm at every approach, squirted through my right leg, and shot off on the other side. Finally got it together each way, and then picked up the canter.

Samesies. It was dreadful.

Eventually we got the left lead sorted, but the right lead - his harder direction - was just a mess. Couldn't hold the rhythm to find a distance to save our lives, and no matter how he got to it he basically just smashed through it and landed in a heap.

ONE SINGLE GROUND POLE. If you want to expose some huge gaping holes and your horse's inability to get its feet out of their own way, 11/10 recommend this exercise.

Eventually MB took pity on us and was like, let's do some trot instead. The trot was banging. Light, collected, forward, best SI to date (only took us five years to get those); my eyeballs were literally sweating when we stopped from how hard it was to ride. EVEN WHEN IT'S AMAZING IT IS SO HARD!

hacking out is a must for both our mental sanity

We still had 15 minutes left in our lesson so I asked MB if we could work on the canter halfpasses. The trot are fine. Easy peasy, Opie and I both understand them. Turns out I did not understand one single thing about how to ride a canter halfpass. Our fifteen minutes was thirteen minutes of MB being like, "No, that is not what I'm saying to you. Listen to the words coming out of my mouth and watch me prance across the diagonal like you are supposed to be doing." And me up there just like, "........wut."

She finally took my phone to video me from behind because I'm a visual learner, and the first attempt was a Fail.

I'm trying to shove him across the ring and it turns into a tense, fucked up, incorrect leg yield. MB kept telling me to just turn the shoulders onto the diagonal and let him go, and I was like, "But then he is not bent into a halfpass shape and won't go sideways and we will never make itttttttttt!!1!1!" So I decided I would PROVE THIS to MB by doing exactly what she told me.

No one will be surprised that this was indeed a more correct halfpass, and that I was wrong and my trainer was right. So that was a delightful win in that if I do less there, I fuck up my horse less. Poor Opie. We quit with that because he was over my shit at that point. 

So much homework to work on now though. And maybe one day we'll actually get to work on the change over the pole instead of just cantering over it without falling on our heads.