good rides and horse shoes
This past week I finally dropped my stirrups down and started working on a proper dressage seat. Flame, bless his heart worked mighty fine.l It’s a hard thing to do, getting him back on track while trying to get yourself working right. It’s been a long time for him to start working proper, it’s been even longer than that for me. I haven’t ridden in a dressage seat for coming close to 6 years, even though I rode in a dressage saddle. That hunter/jumper seat is a hard thing to ditch. But we plowed on, and had a couple good rides this week. Good solid 10 minutes before tacking up, working on moving forward.. i am aiming for a trot where he’s up tracking but not rushing (for you non horsie peeps, that’s having the hindfoot step into the footprint made by the front foot). After lunging I spent a good 10 minutes working on ground manners; lots of stepping off with me at a trot inhand, turns, stops, bowing, kneeling. That really gets his mind focused. Then I lunged him for another 10 minutes in tack.
I lowered the side reins to go where they rest at the base of his shoulder. usually I hook the sidereins up to the girth straps so they don’t slide down, but having them lower makes him lower his polline line and work the back muscles more. I have to build his back up, so all the lunging in tack is now like this for a while. Poor thing, was exhausted by the time I actualy decided to ride. Then we worked on lots of the same lowered polline frame. Had a nice swinging stride at the trot, and I worked on my own position while doing big circles and serpentines. He was quite light in the mouth and carrying himself for once, bending and changing direction of flextion in the curves. I posted in the trot for about 15-20 minutes, then I decided to sit because I had such a lovely trot coming out of him. Did that for 20 minutes.. and HOly crap I’m still feeling it a few days later. But as the old saying goes, no pain no gain right?
Wednesday Flame met his new farrier. I can honestly say it wasn’t the best experience. The other horses had all been put out after their lunch (they have breakfast, go outside, come in for lunch and then back out till evening). Flame was in no mind to be standing around when all his buddies were outside. I got about 5 minutes of quiet if not slightly bugeyed standing in the cross ties before I finally just had to drop the ties off him and just hold him with the lead rope. He was much quieter, but continiously tried to sneak one foot at a time around the corner and out the door. Our new farrier is a nice older gent, he likes to hum songs to the horses.. Flame spent a lot of time rearranging what hair the guy has left on his head. So he’s got his toes trimmed up, and his shoes reset. We’ll see how things go in the next few months about his back feet. I opted for no shoes this time around because I need to see how they fair here in his field and with the amount of work that he is doing.
