What was supposed to be a nice calm stretchy session turned into ZOOMING. Bonus points to Cliff for figuring out that his trotting poles are very jumpable.

Tomorrow we'll go back in the ropes. Today was fun but we need to be a smiiidge more productive than this.

Looking good! :D

Missed this view ♡

We just did a little trail ride bareback in a halter to keep his stress low (and also, I'm super sick right now. Yay.) and he didn't miss a beat. Moved off my leg both directions, walked nice and forward. I'm happy to be back. I think he is too.

Set up a new trot pole exercise and actually let Pogo sparkle through it since he needs to start getting fitter too.

Then I pulled Cliff out to go through it and almost immediately realized he was lame so it was the walk of sadness up to the barn for bute, and I picked up his feet in hopes of finding an abscess and found this instead.

Only my horse. I think it's a piece of pottery, which is a perfectly abnormal thing to get wedged into your shoe. It took ten minutes, a wrench, and two people to get it out but now he's sound and will get a day or two off just in case before we get back to work!

Wow quite crazy! Lucky it wasn't anything to serious!

As usual, I did not follow my own plans and instead of putting our first real ride in my western saddle where the distribution of pressure is kinder than the english saddle, I just popped the verhan on his back and went.

I did try the lamicell pad on him and the fit seemed decent, though his withers were a little sore after the ride, it might be because he's unused to the work and not necessarily because the fit was bad. It'll be easier to tell over the coming weeks as I ride him more and more.

I'm really happy. I'm just glad to be back.

Not only your horse XD My sister and I were in the middle of a trail ride and her horse started lipping. I noticed he was elevated, and found a huge rock in there. Looked similar to that.

Cliff got a week off because something in his right hind was bothering him. Yesterday I put him on the lunge, and he was sound unless he inverted himself and rushed around, so he went back in the pessoa system today to see if keeping him correct would keep him sound. It did! I took it off after and let him jog around and he offered up some lovely steps.

But a few seconds after he stopped trotting here, his entire right hind fell out from beneath him. He walked out of it immediately but considering that I've been noticing something not quite right in the right hind, I'm a little worried now. It looks like weakness- but considering all the work he's been doing, it really shouldn't be weakness anymore. Not quite sure how to proceed from here.

Updating to add that after posting this, I freaked out about the step to my friend, and she proceeded to tell me I'm being paranoid about a horse tripping in bad footing and to get over it. (This is good advice. She's being nice) So I'm just gonna... put it out of my mind and focus on moving forward.

Clifford decided to try and cut his eye open today, because it has been far too long (2 days) since he's given me a heart attack. Regardless, I smeared some silvadene onto the cut and saddled up and we went and rode. He was a jerk starting out, kicking up and trying to boltz but once I sat down and rode through it he settled and we had a really nice twenty minute powerwalk. Lots of stretching and bending left and right and marching forward, so I'm happy about that.

His withers were sore again afterwards so I'm going to ditch the half pad and just try the saddle from now on. I bought it because it fits him, and I think fit is overall more important than distributing the pressure at this point.

Haven't been able to do much in four days due to weather, but this morning was lovely and clear and breezy and the arena was under water, so we did some puddle work!

Cliff started out ever so slightly off, but he worked out of it, which doesn't susprise me since he's not been worked in almost a week. After, he was beautifully sound and happy to stretch through his back and withers and reach forward and engage his hocks.

Going right was definitely easier than going left. The entire time he was trotting left he kept drifting right and dragging me through the puddles, which indicates weakness in his right hind as he can't push on it and keep himself balanced going left, so that's something we'll have to refocus on going forward. It's funny, he started out being worse going right, so we fixed that and now need to counter that a bit. But that's the fun of horse training. There's always something to work on.