Sailing Along

Geez Louise...

It's pretty amazing what can be accomplished when a person stops fighting their head and just gets back to business.

The big bay has progressed to being saddled and was pretty good about it. I may not have been thrilled with the trainer overdoing the round-pen riding, but it's pretty obvious how much he put into the ground-work on this horse...

My goal is to just keep messing with Jet-saddling and ponying him, until I get the time to start going over to Bub's and then I will have someone pony me while I am on the horse. Jet is a full QH on paper, but he is all TB in his brain and way of thinking. He needs forward movement and lots of it.

Bugs fell right back into work mode, so we moved to the round pen for some sacking and I even jumped on and rode him around bareback. Now, I'm riding him in full accouterments...

My round pen is 40', but Bugs struggles to work in such a small area, I'm going to take a chance and move to riding him outside in my riding area by the house. We have lots of work to do to get this little guy limbered up.

Frosty and Moon got some bitting work. This is a prime example of how Frosty likes to travel...
The horse carries his neck very stiffly and it's like he sucks it back into himself (think turtle)...It just totally locks him down in the front. It took a lot of playing with the rein length and I actually had to over-bit him to get him to stop doing that...
Normally I do not bit a horse so that they have to travel with their nose behind the vertical to get release, but sometimes you just have to do what you have to do. I do not leave them this way for more than a couple of circles. It's too much and if over-done can create it's own set of problems. The day after bitting, Frosty was being plumb silly, which is his way of saying, "I'm a bit sore' and sure enough he was a smidge tender...But he was tender over his whole topline and not just over his loin, so he is finally starting to use all of his back. We just worked on stretching and extending the walk on the line and we warmed right out of the muscle tenderness. Yesterday I saddled him and went for a ride in the field next door. Good lord getting this horse to just walk out is hard work (Frosty thinks it is hard work too), but we made a couple of rounds and worked on a lot of softening. Afterwards, I noticed he seemed pretty tender on his hind fetlocks and they felt a bit warm. Lots of changes going on in this horse's body and I think I'm going to be dealing with lots of different sore spots until all the kinks are worked out.

Moon acted like he had about the same amount and kind of soreness as Frosty after being bitted up the day before. When I started to work him in small circles, I noticed a hint of a hitch in his giddy-up on the left hind...so instead, we went for a brisk hand-walk for about 15 minutes. Here I was not wanting to fatigue or strain those muscles and when I turned him out, he blasted off, did some jump, buck, farts and hauled butt to the other end of the pasture where the other horses were. Alrighty then! He's back to being ridden as well and we worked on the same thing as I did with Frosty, except for Moon, it's about making him stay engaged in the hind-end. He did pretty good and only fell out a couple of times. I'm not sure what to think about Moon, he seems so docile. Obviously, since we are not competing or training hard, I have backed way off his grain ration and with 24 hour turn-out I don't expect his energy level to be real high, but it feels weird...him being so quiet, after getting used to him having loads of energy like he did this last summer, but he is moving better and the soreness he experienced before is not manifesting again, so I'll take it and be happy.