Weekend Ramblings

Another lovely weekend with the beasts.  After her heroic effort in our lesson on Friday, I gave Prair the day off on Sat (read: I was on the couch obsessing my way through season 2 of Scandal), but Sunday I went out for a nice hack.

There were two small X's set up in the Outdoor which I took advantage off.  They were about 4 strides apart, but one was set on the quarter line, and the other on the 1/8th line which made them not really awesome as a "line."

Instead after another exceptionally nice warm up, we figure-eighted around them, sometimes incorporating one jump into a big circle, sometimes landing, switching leads and rolling back to the other jump.

Since there was lots of ring both in front and behind the fences I tried (really, really hard) to not rush the change or rollback, but instead focus on landing, picking the mare up, straightening her out, then asking for a change on the straightaway before turning.  Often I use our change in direction to suggest a change and then clean up any fallout afterward, but channeling our lesson on Friday I wanted to ask for the change rather than leave Prair to decide she should swap.

I know I've been in a love fest with the mare recently but omg she was so good.  I had my spurs back on, which I think are helping us at the moment - or at least they are helping me not accept a totally underpowered gait which is ultimately helping us..

So another fun ride with Prair.  She's a gem.

Then it was Gussie's turn, and if there's one thing this horse knows it's how to make his people feel loved.  He cracks me up.  You can barely get out to his paddock without him pricking his ears and galloping his little heart out to get up to the gate.  adorable.

So I groomed the big man up, booted him up and busted out the bareback pad thinking it was time for a serious ride.

But, Gus is as Gus does and when I threw him on the lunge I saw the telltale return of the head bob.  It is by no means as horrid as it was with the abscess, but it's worse than his glorious looking days of the past couple weeks.

Bad Gus.

So I cut our lunge session short and kept our ride to a walk.  He is still moving much better and is able to balance himself more than before which is a good sign... but I'm sad the miraculous recovery didn't last a bit longer. 

That's the update.  There was going to be dizzying lunge footage of Gus' improved trot, but I nixed that when I saw that his improved trot was gone.

Easy week ahead with a couple lessons smeared into a work schedule that's starting to get packed with year end meetings and budgets and fun things like that.