A Glimpse of Progress

Well, I had great plans for Thursday (my day off). I had a productive morning at home, then planned on eating lunch and heading out to the barn. But I fell asleep on the couch. It was a great 2 hour nap in the afternoon, however it meant that I didn't get out to the barn until the evening.

I decided that I would focus on Cisco, mostly because I want to give Phantom Ventipulmin before I ride her but I didn't want to wait for it to kick in on this night.

He was a little up at the beginning of the ride - there was a group that had trailered in for lessons. Cisco believes that any horse he hasn't met is a new best friend that he hasn't made yet, so he was quite looky at what they were doing.

Cisco was a total drama llama when loose on Friday night. Emphasis on the llama part.

The good thing about riding during this lesson is that I had to spend most of my time down at the scary end of the arena. Because there were horses tied up at that end, Cisco didn't find it scary. So annoying.

The stopping in the corners that we've been doing for the last couple of rides really paid off today and we had some nice deep corners. At a trot at least.

Our right lead canter felt fantastic. Our left lead was running and inverted. But the transitions were prompt and we got the correct lead each time.

I was going to try to do some figure 8's with a simple change in the middle. But I kept having to change my path to accommodate the rider who was lessoning. I ended up having to do a half circle reverse on my left lead at one point and that kind of opened a can of worms.

We couldn't really turn. Whoops.

We had to keep trying it. I wasn't looking for a really tight turn. More like 15-18 meters. But because Cisco was so runny and inverted on that tough left rein, my outside aids weren't working and I had to grab my inside rein.

Suck a dork.

But on our third (or fourth?) attempt, we picked up what was probably our best left lead canter to date. It was slow and relaxed enough that it felt like something I could work with. And he mostly kept it together down the long side and through the turn of the half circle. It was our best turn - still not a great turn mind you - because for the first time he was relaxed and not running.

We just did our attempt at a stretchy trot after that and I called it a day.

Phantom did get ridden on Friday night. She got her Ventipulmin, so she wasn't puffy when I rode and we increased the trot sets to 2 minutes. She definitely started off a little stiff feeling. I still haven't decided if I want to get her looked at to see if I should get her some Previcox to give her before riding. Mostly because I don't want to find a new issue that I will need to throw money at. We'll see how the next month goes and then make a decision.