I'm Blaming the Oncoming Sickness

It's a good thing that I lunged Stitch on back-to-back days Monday and Tuesday this week, because not only did the wildfire smoke come in at hazardous air quality levels, after 4 1/2 years of avoiding it, I finally succumbed to Covid on Wednesday. Mid-way through my week of vacation.

That's a definite positive.

So far, I'm either too hot or chilled, have a cough, and all my joints and problem areas ache. It's only been about 30 hours so who knows how the next few days will go. I've had four vaccinations so hopefully they work their magic and keep the symptoms minimal.

Anyhow, on the Tuesday I tried to capture the lunging using my new Pivo Pod X. This is the one that I Kickstarted back in October 2021 and it finally shipped this spring. After I didn't have a horse to ride, of course. 

I tried it once just after it arrived without reading the instructions and didn't have much luck. I thought I'd try it again, knowing that lunging wasn't going to be the best option to test it.

The Pivo Pod X is the one that moves on an x and a y axis. Meaning that it can tip up and down as well as go sideways to keep the selected item in focus.

I'm currently 0/2 on using it.

The first problem is that I didn't put my phone in landscape mode, which is required for horse tracking. If I had bothered to check it after a couple of minutes I would have seen the message saying so, but I did not.

When I put my phone onto the holder in portrait mode, it was angled up towards the rafters. I thought that once it found the horse it would self-adjust, but for 80% of the video the top 3/4 of the screen is rafters. For some reason it did adjust down towards the end, so I've got the couple of circles seen here.

I don't think lunging is easy for the Pivo to keep the horse on the screen as it has to be set up outside the the circle. I'll try it again though, and see if the problems were all user error.

I also realized I can try the Pixio. If I attach the tracker to the saddle then it should track the horse while on the lunge. I can pop it in a case of some sort before clipping to a d-ring.

So, here's a whole 40-some seconds of Stitch on the lunge.

His left lead is the stickier one, and this might be the best transition he's done so far. He's starting to find some balance at the canter and I'm happy with how quickly he relaxed into it.

He wants to fall out to the right when tracking left so I try to use the walls to encourage him to stay straighter. The sessions are very short because homeboy has zero fitness. Not necessarily bad for a baby horse for the first few rides!