Harmonious Rides

As you have read, this ridiculous snow has forced us to either haul out to ride or not ride at all...which with work being as rough as it has been, having the time to haul out hasnt been there. BUT rather then teach Sunday like normal, I couldnt with our rings being frozen so I had another free day...so of course I make a point to haul to an indoor to ride.

so pretty

Tillie was an absolute star...I did some warm up in the walk just letting her free walk on a loose rein for a few minutes. I am still really aware of this head wag thing so my goal for todays ride was to see if she did it and if it was P's theory of not being through enough....so my goal was ride her forward thinking and see what I get.

Before I continue, the notion of getting a horse through or on the bit or in a frame...all those key phrases you hear...is always taught right the back end not the head. So yes, I should be riding more forward thinking always, but if you have been following my posts you know how hot my horse gets. The tricky thing about hot horses...when they get forward but are behind your leg so not really accepting the contact. THIS is what I mean by getting Tillie forward thinking...more accepting of my leg without being rushing forward but maintaining a rhythm and willing to seek the contact.

Bright eyed and ready to work

Today, I took dressage trainer C's advice and put her together in the walk before trotting. She was wonderful and remembered how to turn off my seat and bend with the use of my inside leg while keeping a nice marching walk. So without expecting anything other then a willing transition into trot I tried use the quick leg aid like the windshield wiper and she did a nice little spring into a trot. She settled into a nice rhythm and I only wanted rhythm and tempo to maintain at this point...after a few laps in each direction she naturally started seeking the contact on her own. AND NO HEAD WAGGING! 

I noticed tracking left she will tend to get forward more since she gets off balance more easily...while going right shell back off and I shockingly found myself using my driving aids to promote a bigger step. I am starting to think the head wag comes from my tension when she feels unbalanced...

I let her have a walk break keeping in mind we havent been in consistent work before picking her up again and boy was she in work mode. Normally shell start pulling and diving, testing the contact at the walk after I let her stretch...but she was quiet and our trot transition was spot on and connected. 

So we did our homework from a few weeks ago of lengthening and shortening the stride...lengthening on a smaller circle to prevent building or excitement and then shortening on a larger circle. She did it shockingly really well so I went ahead and tested them across our diagonals. 

They may not have been text book correct or pretty, but boy was riding that line fun. You could feel Tillie playing and testing her balance and get close to teetering into canter and re-balance with a small lift of my reins. 

She say oh yea thats fun!

Whats harder for her on these is coming back and restraining herself...which she surprised me again and was willing to come right back to a working trot. 

So after some laughs with my barnmate that hauled with us (she also tried these but on her green and very uncoordinated baby) We moved into leg yielding into canter transitions which my hopes would help a two things: 1) get our leg yields straighter through the body and not lead with the shoulder...and be soft / relaxing into it 2) improve the canter transition which would improve the balance of our canter. 

That sounds hard

It is a great exercise C has had us do a few months ago...and with Tillies left lead being much weaker and being unbalanced decided it would be a good thing to do. 

Tillie did the leg yields only first like a champ and was pretty darn willing to move her butt over when I asked her to keep it in line. So I went ahead and started on the harder lead first and the first canter transition into the left lead was slightly muddled but definitely not as bad as it was before the snow storm. So a few laps in left lead canter I was going to inside leg on and off to get her inside hind "jumping" and could hear C in my head saying "pop! pop!!" and got a pretty nice canter that didnt feel like our dressage lesson where it was on the verge of diving into the ground.

By the 3rd transition, it was spot on. Right lead canter was nice and I worked on getting more canter without getting flat. Its hard for me to think about adding more leg to get uphill when it feels fast, BUT this ride was nice because she felt in a good rhythm that I could push for more. 

After that we called it a day and ended with being a good quiet adult horse and gave a lead over a x-rail to the green bean and Tillie was such a good girl for that too! A few mere months ago that would have sent her exploding!

Now just to get in more riding time!

Stretching sunday

I have started enlisting my helpers Sundays to ride Tillie for me at the walk and some trot so she can have an easy stretching Sunday. Tillie seems to enjoy it and I like that it gets her moving without working. Plus the students LOVE it and always ask to ride her :)

Tillie ready and waiting! 

We had a ton of rain Saturday night and found our ring in less then stellar shape with a lot of our lovely footing clumping together/washing and building up to areas of the ring.

Basically it was like soup....but by the end of the day it wasn't AS bad. But definitely something  I reported and it will need to be re-dragged and evened out with maybe more thoughts to solving this drainage issue. 

It ended up being another warm day with some odd weather...half sunny half ominous clouds with intermittent torrential downpours followed by warm sunny skies. I was in a t-shirt half the day and my winter coat the other half! 

Half sunny half stormy

 It produced the most vibrant rainbow I have ever seen....and the picture just doesnt do it justice.

My student on Tillie - doesnt she look thrilled

I was excited to find Tillie licked her breakfast clean! I am hoping the ulcer treatment is starting to work. After talking with P saturday, she suggested doing more prevention so I didnt have to treat and deal with the hassle of that every so often.

I also realized Tillie has some rain rot kind of buried under her coat (which is crazy cuz her coat isnt THAT thick) when I was brushing her saturday. I now think this is what is causing her back soreness and have started treating it...hopefully it heals soon despite all this wet weather!

I used Tillie in a ground lesson to teach this group of students interested in owning a horse how to approach a horse, give treats, do carrot stretches, groom, blanket and pick feet. She was such a STAR and loved the little kids. You could see her watching them (they were shorter then her belly!) and was so careful and polite. It made me just want to kiss her. 

Unfortunately, when helping the student practice blanketing I noticed  that her right hock looked slightly larger...instantly my hysteria sets in since that is her cellulitis leg.

I had a bit of a hard time determining where is looked big at first...I just knew it did. I literally ran my hands all over it (didn't feel any heat) and ruled out areas by comparing the two. The outside looked normal, the cap looked normal...the filling seemed to be on the inside just above the joint. 

left (normal) hock

Right hock

Part of me started questioning if it was lighting...but I swear there is/was some minor filling...The two pics above are hard to compare because its different angles/closeness. But I felt like I couldnt see as much definition on the inside of the right hock as I could the left. 

I took her out and trotted her both ways and she looked sound...but having experience the cellulitis and the entire year it took to get back to normal made me start looking for new scratches and check some smaller ones I found the day before...and even check for mud fever. 

I of course text a barn friend who talked me off the ledge and said if she was sound on it not to worry...so here's me trying not to worry!