I've been teaching and had a show with Moose this past Saturday so time to ride has been minimal for the past several days. I did get to ride Evil a couple of times and he is doing pretty well...I am trying to fix his crookedness and his inattentiveness/brattiness and teach him to stretch into the hand. We had some really good trot work on Sunday, he finally reached out and took the contact and worked well into it.
I also got to work with Buster a couple of times and think I might be able to ride him in the foreseeable future. He's sassy but bold and brave and made his first trip to the big ring yesterday. He wasn't very looky or spooky, and we walked over poles and jumps with no problem. I also lunged him at the walk and trot and while at first he had some trouble staying out on a consistent circle, he figured it out and was very very good. He still gets a little confused and stuck when going to the right, he's much stiffer but also a little jumpier when I'm on his right side. We worked on leading off the right side a bit and while he got a little upset at times, he figured it out. Buster also learned about cross ties and while he did test them out a bit, he figured it out and stood really still to be groomed and let me pick up all four feet with zero drama so he's coming along quite nicely.
Saturday I took Moose to a small schooling show at Blue Good Stables. Moose just needed to get out, she's so bored. Unfortunately, because she has been getting a ton of food that I didn't approve, including a ton of sweet feed, oats, and alfalfa, she was extremely jumpy, spooky, and unfocused. I definitely thought I was going to fall off several times, or have to get off and scratch...it was that bad! She also tried to tear apart the trailer when she was on it too...which she normally doesn't do. I feel bad for her, she has so much energy and it's frying her brain. She's coming back to Knights Landing tomorrow and going on an appropriate amount of appropriate feed so in a couple of weeks I think I should have my good ol' Moose back.
We did training 1 and training 2 tests. I managed to keep her within the general moves of the tests, even though she was very very tense and constantly snapping out of attention and looking for stuff to spook at. I got so focused on this one corner of the ring that she kept spooking at (very badly!!!) that I messed up my second test, and had to take the -2 for the fault, which stunk...but oh well. The judge had some nice things to say about us anyway, said we were a good match for each other and I rode her well (and was brave...haha) and somehow we managed to get 2nd and 3rd. I didn't see the rides of our competition but they must have been riding their horses backwards for me to have made out with a 2nd and 3rd!
Warm up before the second test...Moose kept doing this weird thing where we'd be turning left and her hind end would swing out to the right and then she would fly awkwardly sideways to the right, away from the corner she was spooking at...so here I am trying to get her to listen to my right leg and move her shoulders left, which did help a lot in the second test
She would just not reach out for me
Tense fire-breathing dragon
Headed for center line
Zoooooooooooooommmmmmmmm! I was a little concerned (to say the least) about the canter, I thought for sure that would be the death of me!
Approaching spooky corner, attention lost :( She spooked at it EVERY SINGLE TIME. That is so not my little Moose mare, she just can't seem to think straight with all that extra rocket fuel
Looking at the ground for stuff to spook at on the spooky side of the arena
Being verrrry conservative with the canter!
I'm probably thinking: "PLEASE just stick to the saddle no matter what she does in this corner!"
Her canters were surprisingly not too horrible
Go from giraffe to hanging out behind the bit. Geez she was a brat...I felt like we never had a single good conversation that day, she just wasn't interested/able to talk with me
Aaaaand lastly, today we picked up a new friend for the barn, Quigley. He's 15 years old, 16.2 hands, a belgian draft/quarter horse cross. Retired foxhunter. Hoping he will be a nice safe quiet addition to the barn...he settled in nicely and seems like a classic draft cross...quiet, steady, sweet. So here's hoping he works out. He's very over weight right now and a little lame somewhere but we are hoping it's an abscess. Time will tell, right now he's on weight watchers...I do hope he works, I LOVE draft crosses for lesson programs. They just don't get offended easy and just don't seem to ever go anywhere too fast and are pretty agreeable.
Now I just need to figure out what saddle we can use on him...oy vey.
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