Committed

Well, I finally sent in our entry for the show yesterday. I waffled back and forth but finally bit the bullet. It gives me motivation to work with Jetta and it will be a good opportunity to dip our toes back into showing. It just might not be pretty, lol.

Jetta continues to improve for the most part though! I finally switched her bit back to her usual Myler since the Herm Sprenger she likes isn't show legal. The HS is a mullen mouth with a port and the port is just barely too big. She just goes SO well in it. I think we're on our 4th ride in the Myler and while she isn't very pleased and we're definitely not going to get many points on acceptance of the bit, at the very least she actually listens to my half halts now!

Yesterday I feel like we definitely had a bit of a breakthrough. I went into our ride wanting to focus on relaxation. She tends to get wound up more and more the more transitions and lateral work you ask her for. So we warmed up with lots of walking, just focusing on her getting soft on the bit, accepting my leg, being bendy, etc.

Once we moved into the trot I worked on letting her stretch out and down. She LOVES stretching, the only problem is that she uses it as an excuse to either run away with me, get super on her forehand, or just generally become a freight train. So every time she got too fast, I half halted her. If she didn't listen to my half halt then I stopped her. If she just trotted nicely she got to stretch as much as she wanted. We did lots of serpentines and figure eights to keep her little walnut brain engaged, the changing direction also helped her not anticipate the canter when I used my leg to turn.

Once she got really soft and not heavy on the forehand, I asked for a canter. I mainly focused on getting her to accept my outside rein at the canter and not brace. Otherwise I didn't worry about where her head was at and she did a good job of not being too speedy.

Canter-trot downward transitions are still not very good, but at least we can do them at this point. They still aren't very accurate and she gets heavy and fast in the trot, but I'm able to bring her back to a reasonable speed in a handful of strides. So not ideal, but we're working on it.

Getting back to that pre-baby bod

We even managed to do a little bit of lengthened trot work! I'm not super happy with it, but it's a start. She didn't anticipate, she let me regulate the speed and came back to whatever speed/gait I asked afterwards without bracing. 

I think the break through was letting Jetta have a little bit longer neck without getting faster. She realized that if I half halt her and she doesn't get fast, I will let her have a bit longer neck, thus we get a nicer trot instead of a short, tight neck with a quick trot. It felt much improved, so hopefully it sticks!

Starting to enjoy our rides again!

Today definitely felt better. She definitely remembered that she got to stretch if she listened to my half halts. We can't always warm up like this because she gets rude about wanting to stretch down, but I'll take the progress!

I also forgot that I didn't post about our trail ride the other day! We had a pretty slow week coming up in school so a fellow horsey vet student came out to my barn to go ride the trails with me. It was super fun - she has THE CUTEST little QH mare named Remy. She's only 3 but she was awesome the entire time and I am seriously going to steal her. Her conformation is to DIE for, she looks and moves like a miniature warmblood in a little cutting horse package. She is super fancy. It was nice to get out and about with a friend!

In random school related notes... I did my first surgery on a sheep! An abomasopexy to be exact. It actually went super smoothly and our ram recovered perfectly. I was nervous and there weren't the best guidelines provided on how to perform it, but it turned out great!

I'm on the left. I have a unicorn surgery cap, obviously

And my office is coming along and getting cozier for the endless hours I spend in here!