Day 259

I was all excited to ride Harry after a stressful week at school, but when we got out there, as I was brushing him, I noticed he was bleeding on his back right hock. After cleaning it up, the swelling went down to just a large bump. After inspecting his stall, since he hasn't been outside, I could only find a couple of places where there were flat screws a little bit out, but they were dull...I could only guess that he got mad at his neighbor Dora (she's in heat) and kicked and scraped his leg during the kick. After we cleaned him up, I brought him in the arena to longe a little bit. He walked, although at one point on a reverse he started to speed up a little, but he started limping pretty badly, so he went back down to a walk. After a good amount of walking just to get the blood flowing, I figured "Heck, I might as well play some games with him" since I couldn't ride him. We played the Friendly Game, during which I was super happy because he finally let me swing the rope over his back. We played a little Yo-Yo game and the Porcupine game in one direction, because the other direction he looked like he was dragging his bad leg, so I stopped. He was really responsive in the direction he was good at though! Then I just walked backwards and he followed me across the soundboard at a walk, then I put him in to rest.

I rode Brie and my mom rode Nina. Brie was so snotty today! She tried to bite Sadie and Harry as they walked by her on the cross tie! But you couldn't tell that from her ride. She was a fantastic ride today. Very calm, very responsive. Most of the time I just let her go where she wanted though, since I wasn't in the mood for working very hard. We let Nina and Brie chase each other around the arena, then they followed each other in circles, all while we did nothing! It was quite cute.

Mom pointed out that Brie is not as collected as she used to be and I had noticed that. I think it's just because we've been focusing in Harry and Nina since they show and kind of letting Brie just do whatever. We're going to put the rear end collector on her next weekend, maybe the draw reins. I am not a fan of those reins!

Day 174

These past two days experimenting with the fruit basket on Brie have made me realize on thing: she's perfectly fine. With the basket on, she kept pacing and was out of gait on the board for the first time in 7 years. She rode beautifully when I took off the basket. I think that I can just work on flexibility without the basket.

Harry appeared to have worked better today for my mom. She didn't put the bracelets on today. What we really have to work on is getting him to collect his corto so that his largo appears more extended. He can't go very fast at a largo without getting confused, which I think is caused by his early Fino background. It's good that we're figuring this out early because now we have all winter to perfect both him and Brie.

Nina is doing better. Her skin came off when we washed the wound again so it's slightly pink now but it doesn't look very deep. My brother longed her and then put her out in the pasture. When we were done riding, we walked by her and then behind the trees and she started screaming and running around looking for us, so we had to turn right back around and go back by her so she wouldn't hurt herself. I've never seen her act like that! It was cute and kind of sad.

I won't be able to go out and ride this Saturday, but I can't wait to ride on Sunday. Hopefully the farrier calls back and they get their hooves trimmed on Saturday!

Day 173

So this morning I was talking to my mom about what we'd do when we got out to ride. She decided that we'd put weight bracelets on Harry's back feet and Brie would get the fruit basket today. My mom wants to turn her back into a show horse rather than a "LET'S CHARGE DOWN THE TREELINE" horse. So, guessing that Brie would be the worse one, I took her today.

Somehow, whenever we choose like that, we always end up reversed. Brie adjusted to the fruit basket quite nicely (other than when she was trying to figure out how to poop). Harry, from the looks of it, was completely freaking out over the bracelets. I like to say that he looked like he was squishing grapes for wine. According to my mom, he kept pulling and charging and bucking and not wanting to walk AT ALL.

Brie and I were just floating along. =] I put double reins on her, which I soon found out she hated going backwards in her training. She kept pulling and pulling on the jaquima rein, so I took it off and she immediately set her head super nicely and tucked and stopped pulling when I used just the bit rein. I'd like to keep it that way, but until she gets more flexible again, I have to use the double so it takes the stress off of her mouth.

By the time I got to Harry, I'm pretty sure my mom wore him out. After fighting with him for a couple of minutes at the start while he kept trying to pull away from me, I set the reins down, recollected myself, and went back to how Paco used to ride him when we first got him -- high hands and loose reins.

And he was wonderful. He walked, walked, walked and when we corto'd, it was a little pace-y, but by the time we got to our last pass across the soundboard he was sounding phenomenal. I'd like to try him first again tomorrow to see if it was just him being worn out or if I was doing something right, but my mom wants him first again.

Nina, on the other hand...we came in and she looked fine. We took everyone out to be groomed and my brother calls us over and shows us this.

Somehow, she made a huge gash on the inside of her left hind leg. If we were actually going to Nationals this week, we certainly would not be showing with this! I wish I had taken a comparison picture, but this leg was swollen like a balloon compared to her right leg. After washing it, putting peroxide, iodine, and some other wound salve we had on it, we wrapped it.

Which she then took off when she got into the pasture to walk around a little bit. She wasn't limping or anything, so it must've been a day old or so. We determined that it must be from her scratching herself and the nails from her shoe catching the skin. We're not too happy about that, to say the least. We were going to do another round of shoes in a week, but because we're not showing and now this, we're just going to take them off. We'll give Nina this week rest and see how it looks next weekend before my brother starts riding her again.