Days 260 & 261

Saturday

I was concerned that Harry wouldn't be able to ride today because of his leg, but I made him longe before I rode and he wasn't limping, so I tacked him up to ride. He was so strange. He doesn't want to gait, really, and when he does, he goes way too fast. He hates when you apply leg to him, gets mad when you put pressure on the bit. I just don't know what to do with him. He only wants to do circles. Just circles. Circles of all sizes, but not around the arena. My mom told me that he ran out of calmex, so maybe that's the problem? He didn't even have that great of a board. My mom took him and tried to work with him, but he didn't want to cooperate with her either.

I took out my frustration by letting Brie canter around the arena. She loved it and so did I, so at least that was a nice end to the day.

Sunday

My mom took Harry first today and I worked with Brie. I worked on getting her to set her head a little better, since she's been getting lazy, and she responded well. I also did a lot of stretching from the ground with her before I got on. She wanted to go fast but I just kept working on keeping her calm and making her walk and she settled into a nice walk and then a beautiful corto. She had a wonderful board and her head was set so nice. We did mostly corto, I'm working on her reverses too, since she got in the bad habit of cantering those.

Harry was not too great today either. We're going to just continually keep him on the calmex now, since he seems more able to focus on what we're asking of him when he's on that. There was so much going on today for him to focus on, between music playing and people talking, things that shouldn't bother him, but apparently it does. When there's a lot of things going on, he just likes to chase around Nina and follow whatever she's doing, but that's not gonna happen in competition, so he has to stop wanting to do that.

At the end of our ride, we worked on walking over some poles on the ground. At first, not even Brie wanted to go over them, but we were able to get Harry and Brie over them without hopping, just walking over them. Horses sure do test your patience. I wish I could figure out what to do with Harry though. Hopefully he'll be better again once he's back on the calmex.

Day 167

Brie never ceases to amaze me.

I passed off Harry to my mom today to work on since I was having no luck getting him to gait yesterday, but I'll talk about him later. Brie is insane! Here I am, all worried about riding her because she hasn't been in a while and her leg was stocked up this morning. It was so relaxing to really brush her and scrub at her elbows and what not and to put lineament on her hock and ankle in the back. She looked like she was happy to go.

Then I got on.

I knew from the minute she started swishing her tail that it wouldn't be a relaxing ride.

All I wanted to do was walk her around the arena, you know, take it easy on her. But nope, she was almost literally rearing to go. So after struggling with her, dismounting, longeing, remounting, and repeating, I just let her go.

We cantered for a while in a huge circle about half of the arena. My better judgement told me this was a bad move with her arthritis, but Brie was telling me, "LET ME GO ALREADY DAMMIT!" So we went. To say that she was in one of her fast modes today would be an understatement. We rode with Allison today for probably our last ride before she changes barns. I'm thinking maybe that's why she was a little goofy, but then again my mom said she was pretty crazy for her ride yesterday, so who knows.

Harry was also in a bad mood today because of the fruit basket. In the beginning he tried to buck my mom off. He really doesn't like that thing. But he looked better in his corto today! Even though we're supposed to be doing largo more, I didn't really get to watch it because Brie was always zooming past him. I do know that we have to do more circle work with Harry in order for him to really think about doing everything at once.

While we were out walking around, Harry started dancing but this time his back feet were keeping up with the front and Allison said "I think he's Fino-ing!" So it's not just us who think that he can do it. If only we had a different trainer to help us out, I'm sure Harry could be a Fino horse. But for right now, we're just gonna try to get him to largo for Nationals. We'll see what the winter brings.