"Sorry I still haven't gotten pics of Tuck up yet. He's still training up well and looking great. He's in perfect weight about 1400# with no belly. We put him back in his own bit and I bought him a nice bridle with a cavesson and flash - just over $100 from England on Ebay - Rheingold brand. He is a real favorite in the barn. We were very pleased with the job you did with Tuck. Have a good summer."
His "own bit" would be the Myler loose ring, versus they had him in a Sprenger loose ring for a while. Not sure why the bridle is relevant, lol but I'm thrilled that he's going well! He is such a fancy dressage horse, I can't wait to see pictures and I hope she starts showing him soon. And hey, they might be interested in Misty so I could have two horses in the same area! I need to take them up on their offer to come up and stay a weekend to visit Tux and take lessons with his owner's sister who's a dressage trainer.
In my current horse land... Monday I rode Jetta, the poor ponies were completely forgotten last week with the busyness. Two and a half weeks till summer!! She wasn't as amazing as she'd been the past few rides. She warmed up quite spooky and full of herself on the lunge line. Probably didn't help that I'd decided to lunge at the spooky end of the arena.
It kind of set the tone for the rest of the ride. She wasn't bad, she was just tense and didn't want to soften or unlock her jaw so we ended up doing a lot of serpentines and counterbending to get her to relax. The counterbending helped a lot and by the end she was a lo more supple doing the serpentines than at first, but it was still just an eh sort of ride. I can't wait till I can ride her more regularly as I'm sure that's 90% of the problem.
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| Jetta looks fat too. Geez. But what I was hoping you could see (but can't) is that she's got some nice sweat at the base of her withers. Yay, lifting at the base of her neck! |
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| How Jetta feels about baths |
Misty was very good today. I think she needs to have her grain drastically cut though, lol. She's definitely a chunk at the moment and after watching her gallop around me for about 5 minutes on the lunge... she certainly doesn't need the extra energy! It's funny what a change this past year has brought! Last year I was stuffing her full of all sorts of orchard grass hay and alfalfa and grain and still pondering what else I could give her to boost her energy levels.
We had a nice dressage ride, until I discovered a major training hole. We have absolutely zero ability to do a counter canter. Like none. First off it's so hard it's nearly impossible to get her to pick up the "wrong" lead. You cue for it, she gets it for a stride then immediately switches to the "correct" lead. Finally I convinced her that she could canter in a straight line on the wrong lead. Then as soon as she'd get any sort of "turn" going, she'd switch. By the end, we could make it halfway around a corner before switching, so I just called it good. We'll come back to that.
So to end the ride, I picked up the flag again. I think she'll make a nice drill horse! She could care less about the flag and we cantered around with it snapping in the wind. I've always wanted to try drill! Jazz was the only horse I could have ever done it with and the absolute one thing she was terrified (this is the horse that would go through, over, under, between anything) was flags.
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| Flag pony! |
Then I decided to play around on her back to make sure she'd tolerate any shenanigans likely to be thrown at her if she gets a young rider. She could care less, but note to self: apparently I am too old now to slide off the butts of my horses because I tweaked my knee coming off. Oww.
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| The result of the butt-sliding. Misty's going through round 2 of shedding I think... |
It's so great that Tux found such a good home!
ReplyDeletehaha look at all that hair! Yeah that bridle bit seemed weird lol
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