3 Month Conformation and Updates!

Aloha, blogosphere. I am still here. Life has been quite busy, and posting has been...not happening. But I have been riding, and Spring has been progressing, and Leo is...well, let's just say that retirement seems to suit him.

Ahem.

Spring is really looking good these days. She's building topline, and her booty is muscling up nicely. She looks much healthier, and although it's getting fuzzy, her coat maintains a nice level of shine.  

Month One

Neck - skinny. Shoulder - disproportionately huge. Back - almost flat. Ribcage - uncomfortably prominent. Booty - would look best in mom jeans. Spring was a collection of promising angles, all bone and dull coat and awkwardness. 

Month two

For a while there, it seemed Spring was reverting to her former racehorse self. (note that she had just been hosed off when this picture was taken)

Neck - still skinny. Shoulder - more filled out, less disproportionate. Back - somewhat more muscular. Ribcage - less alarming. Booty - still a little flat. She looks fitter here, but still lean - clearly she is in better shape, but she looks more like a racehorse than an eventing prospect.

Month three

She's starting to look like a real horse! That model-thin waist is slowly turning into something substantial, and the bony angles are beginning to form a picture that is much more visually appealing. Her neck has gotten thick enough that pulling her mane finally sounded like a good idea, and her shoulder is starting to blend neatly in with the rest of her rather than leaping out.  Her topline has filled out some more, and her hind end is actually a little muscular. Her coat is healthy, despite its fuzziness. 

And her ribs, finally, have blended in!

Every ride continues to impress me.  Her work ethic, her intelligence, her bravery ... She is such a neat mare.  Right now, we're working on figuring out the headshaking and working on balance. We're adding in bi-weekly training rides, and she continues to be used once a week in jumping lessons. 

Trying out the nose net life

Leo was such a challenge that Spring is relatively easy in comparison - I'm not used to having rides that almost always end productively, or having problems that are worked through in a matter of minutes rather than over the course of an hour.  While I wouldn't call Spring an easy ride, her brain is not as easily fried as Leo's.

I think there's a reason that he's taken to retirement so we'll

Next weekend is the annual Haunted Hunter Pace (the first outing that Leo and I ever attended together) and S and I are attending as partners once again. Hopefully someone will get pictures of us in action this year - our costumes are going to be pretty badass! And the weekend after, if the weather holds, Spring and I will be going to the last local jumper show of the season (which will almost certainly be cancelled since every jumper show that I sign up for gets cancelled, and rainy weekends have been the norm for almost a month now. But. It could maybe happen?)

I'll try to post more frequently!
And if it's not too late and I'm not completely out of the game, my 2ptOber time for last week was 9:15.