Back in the Saddle

 

Standing guard over Amanda's boys

I finally got back on my poneh last night. For a week, we have smeared Surpass on the inside of his left front leg, poked and prodded at his tendon, and aggressively applied the pinch test along the medial suspensory. Last night, there was no flinching or reaction, prior to me saddling him up. Whatever was there a week ago, seems to have healed in the past week.

My friend Chris, reminded me of my little used BOT front boots and gently suggested I stop being an idiot and use them. She has a great point and with the potential to tangle his legs together, having some type of tendon protection while we are developing our flying lead changes would not be amiss.

Speaking of which, why can't you ride dressage with leg protection? Just curious as to the history of that particular restriction . . .. 

Ashke was unusually affectionate, snuggly, and a little demanding about all of his itches being scratched. I think he missed being worked and really enjoys our time under saddle, because he gets very apologetic when we have any time off. Even during our lesson, he was leaning toward snuggling with Amanda more than he was interested in moving. It was very cute.

We did a lot of walk, some trot, a little bit of canter. No flying changes, despite the angry, grumpy ears when we were riding canter-walk-canter transitions. It's so good to reinforce his need to listen to me rather than riding about willy-nilly throwing flying changes at every turn. 

We ended with riding through the walk and trot part of our test, which was interesting because my very smart horse really wanted to turn left at C and was very confused about turning right for the L5 test. Little bugger. Mind like a steel trap, that one. We had ridden for an hour, but with lots of breaks and nothing overwhelmingly difficult. When I untacked, his legs were tight and he was non-responsive to pinching. 

Such a huge sigh of relief.

Going forward, the BOT boots will be used on every ride and we will be very cognizant of how his feet are going into week six of our farrier cycle. If his toes are long, we will do more work on long trot and a more forward canter and stay away from the really collected movements to try and keep this from happening again.