Avoidance is not a good strategy

A recap for anyone who has forgotten and for our new readers. Smartie. The horse who I originally started blogging about, six years ago. Smartie was a dangerous horse. He started off nervous and jumpy, but I got him backed and was walking and trotting indoors, after being difficult to girth and a bit bucky when I was on. The he went from bad to worse. He bucked like a rodeo horse and there was no way to stay on him. In the stable he was dangerous and unpredicable to handle and could suddenly freak so badly that he would lose his footing and fall over. We worked out quite early on that he was partially sighted and had no peripheral vision, but the vet told us it was both untreatable and would not progress. It did - he went blind and I had him put down.

Here is the complication. Ace is the image of Smartie. Same colour. Same shape. Same height. And every single time I get on him, and when I think of getting on him, I have flashbacks of being launched into the stratosphere by Smartie. It never happens, but those memories are there and they pop into my head whether I want them to or not.

So days like yesterday, when I was feeling a bit weak and whingy, I avoid riding Ace. On the one hand it sounds like a good strategy, but delay only makes the fear build up.

Today I made myself ride Ace. And he was an angel. Walk, trot and canter on each rein. A bit of leg yield in walk. A few walk/trot transitions because I noticed that he no longer kicks himself up into trot with his forehand, and is coming through from behind instead, but a bit sluggish with it. He was every bit the gentle, kind and talented horse we thought we had bought :-)  So that's one more day without any problems, and one more step down in the strength of the flashbacks.

I rode Jazz too, practising circling inwards in trot and in canter. We need to be more balanced and relaxed in our 10m circles, and I felt that circling in to 5m and out again would help with that. He tried very hard and was a very good boy. His bend in canter left was superb, I could see his head and his bum from my left eye. The right was not so good in trot or canter, but I can't say they were "bad" either, just not so bent around my inside leg.

I did some walk pirouettes too, because we have two half-pirouettes in walk in our next test, M74. They felt pretty good to me. He definitely stayed in one spot with his hind legs, though I am not sure whether he swivelled around on his back feet or whether he kept the walk going as he should have done. I'll have to get a video to find out.

Another interesting thing has happened with Jazz. He no longer shakes his head when I give him a loose rein. For a couple of years he has reacted to being allowed a loose rein by shaking his head and neck as if it was aching. I asked Sonia about it and she said it was nothing, but I have always felt that he was not holding himself right somewhere, and causing tension which caused an ache. Well he has stopped doing it. Putting that together with the fact that his wither has come up at least half an inch over the winter, I believe that he is now working more correctly than he ever has before, which is probably why he is suddenly able to do stuff he could not do last year.

Butkins refused to come in with the others this morning, so he spent several hours in solitary confinement on the yard instead of going into the barn with the big boys. Last time he did that he made sure to behave extra well for days!!

C