Oh dear oh dear. Woody is quite lame on his near fore today. Much lamer than he has ever been. I was having kittens. I brought him back into his stable hoping against hope to find signs of a brewing abscess, and I have never in my life been happier to find a nasty overreach! He's taken a slice into his heal that is very new, and obviously sore. Thank goodness for that! Phew, panic over. He's very short backed with active hind legs, so overreaches are always going to be a risk with him.
Radar had a long hard workout on the arena, nearly an hour of mostly trot and canter. But he needs to do it if he is to be fit enough to hunt and not strain himself, and he seems to suffer schooling with much better grace than he used to.
Ace. The wind is very high and very sharp, but for the most part he was fine. He has stopped objecting to my leg going on now that I lunge him with the stirrups flapping. He bucked badly on the right canter transition but I just pushed him back into trot, and tried again. He did it again so I pushed him back into trot (he wants to stop) and carried on trotting for some minutes, until he offered a quiet transition. I don't react at all to these episodes now, and it seems to puzzle him.
He schooled well, doing walk trot transitions past the barrels, and shoulder in trot too. Then I think he got the idea in his head that he had done enough and suddenly one of the barrels was going to eat him and he did some vicious spins away from it. I ignored him completely and just kept him trotting until we came around to it again. And again. And again. And then he picked a flapping white marker to get upset about too, so I ignored that too, and again. And again. And again. I let him have as much rein as he wanted, all he had to do was keep his head down and his back free and he was allowed to skirt out round them without a fight. Again. And again. And again. And then suddenly, he dropped it all, and trotted quietly straight past everything that he had been spooking at. Like someone had waved a magic wand. Well, it is Hallowe'en!
C
ps I do hope Jean is OK. I suspect Hurricane Sandy has left her without power, but I hope that is all.
I was wondering about Jean and her horses too.
ReplyDeleteI hope that they are all OK.
It will be good to hear from her.
Ace just sounds like a cheeky monkey !
The trouble is Suzanne that he is a terribly BIG monkey :-) !! He has gone over 17 hands, and is a very upstanding horse as well, so he seems huge.
DeleteI feel a lot better about him today. I remembered suddenly that my friend's similarly bred mare got her off twice in a few days when she was six and that my friend found one excuse after another not to ride her again all winter. At 7, she was fine, so there is hope yet :-)
Fingers crossed for Jean.
C,
Who ever thought that schooling was mostly ignoring your horse's behavior. One of these days he's bound to grow up and just work quietly for you. Are you still using draw reins - I can't remember.
ReplyDeleteI have never had success with overreach boots because they tend to rub on the backs of their heels or pasterns but some horses wear them all the time.