A Week of Firsts

This past week was a pretty busy one, both for me and for Spring.  Last weekend, I made it out to CEC on both Saturday and Sunday to ride, and Spring was fantastic.  Happy, willing, and comfortable - the current saddle setup seems to still be working quite well for her.  I discovered that she doesn't mind at all when I drop my stirrups, and also that her collected trot is absurdly comfortable; I spent about 10 minutes working at sitting the trot without stirrups, and it was COMFORTABLE.  Like, seriously.  The mare was possibly a Western pleasure horse in a former life.  Both of these rides were very brief, as it was hot and I didn't want to overwork her.

new-to-me bridle, thanks SB!

On Monday, my friend C rode Spring in a lesson.  I had planned to ride her, but then Jordyn was still at the barn and available to ride, so I decided to have "one last lesson for real this time" on her and then she was lame and I ended up not riding in a lesson at all.  C struggled some with Spring in the beginning, and they didn't jump anything, but they did figure each other out in the end and had some really nice work on the flat.

I think the Figure 8 is a good look for her.
She's still learning how to pose.  ;)

On Tuesday, we worked entirely on ground manners.  I took her for a long walk around the property, stopping periodically to work on the "stand" command, and utilized Dom's "flailing" technique throughout to work on the her head-rubbing-all-the-time thing.  It was quite productive; at the beginning of our walk, she would stand for about 3 seconds with me holding the lead line, and would basically attempt to smash her face into various parts of my body the entire time.  At the end of the walk, I could stand off to the side with the lead rope completely slack, and she would stand completely still for 20 seconds before getting bored and deciding that it was time to relocate.  Obviously 20 seconds isn't very much time in the big scheme of things, but it was a huge improvement from where we started, and I was pretty happy with that.

Conformation shot, 8/2/17

On Wednesday, Spring met the chiropractor!  I was a little nervous as she is known for being pretty blunt; if she doesn't like something about a horse, she won't hesitate to tell you.  I was halfway convinced that she would notice something about Spring's conformation/body that would be a huge red flag that everyone had somehow overlooked, but thankfully that was not the case!  Dr. A actually really liked her - she commented on how nice her shoulder was, and was very impressed with how well-healed the leg with the old bow is.  She didn't find a single sore spot throughout Spring's entire body, and commented that her leg joints moved well and felt great.  The only thing she noticed was that Spring was very tight throughout her back - which likely is the reason why she has such a difficult time picking up and maintaining the canter.  Her homework for us: take it slow, trot poles and backing to build the hind end, treat stretches after every ride, and recheck in 1-2 months.  Jumping 1-2 times a week is fine, as long as we don't start jacking the height up (which of course was never in the plan - the slow path is, IMO, the best one for a young and out-of-shape horse).  She thinks Spring has a lot of potential!

Almost got all four legs to cooperate.  Almost. 

After the chiro was done with her, my friend L and I headed outside to attempt some conformation shots.  Spring is still underweight and undermuscled, but she already looks loads better than she did when I first brought her home.  Her hind end definitely needs a lot of work, her topline needs to grow, and her neck is so thin right now that I'm actually kind of glad her mane is so long.  But. She's gaining weight back very well, she's happy, and I'm being very careful with the amount of work that we do each day.

standing square behind is HARD. 

Spring had Thursday off, and today I lunged her for about 15 minutes, working on walk/trot transitions and adding in poles.  She seemed a little looser through her back, so I'm hoping that the chiro visit has made something of a difference.  Tomorrow, I'm riding her in a semi-private lesson with Trainer K teaching, and hopefully I'll *finally* be able to pop her over a few crossrails.

they really do love each other

As for Leo, he continues to do well.  I did tack up and hop on for a brief ride last week, but he was pretty anxious about where Saja was and it wasn't particularly productive - although we were able to end on a good note.  I have permission to ride Saja now, so I'm hoping to get one of my friends to come out sometime soon and ride Leo while I ride her so that he spends less time trying to bolt/rear/sprint back to her and more time walking.  I would probably put more effort into trying to "fix" the buddy sourness if I knew whether or not he was sound under saddle/it was time to start some sort of rehabilitation program with him.  Horses are so ridiculous sometimes.