Week

This week has been interesting to say the least. I was supposed to have Ashke’s feet done on Tuesday, but the wind was gusting at first 70+ mph and my farrier declined to shoe a kite. Narrow minded of him. We rescheduled for the next day and he drove off through a cloud of dust. I helped my barn owners secure the awning on the north side runs after what could only be termed a microburst/mini tornado lifted the northwest corner up and threatened to tear it completely off the barn. The wind was so powerful, that it was lifting the barn owner off his ladder, as he was trying to hold down the corner of the roof. The roof in question was about 12 feet wide and may be 140 ft long. If it had torn loose it would have created a freaking disaster. I got a lunge line and we tied the corner down, while the barn owner tried to screw the two pieces of wood together. The next gust ripped out all of the screws. We added another rope over the corner, tying both ropes to the fencing that was concreted into the ground, and then using wood set perpendicular to the roof beams, the barn owner manager to get them secured together. During that time, we were dealing with wind that threatened to topple the ladder, and blinding clouds of dust. It took two days for all of the grit to wash out of my eyes. As a final insult, the portopotty was ripped off its foundation and toppled over. That’s twice in six months that I’ve seen winds blow a portojohn over.

I didn’t try to ride.

Wednesday, Ashke got his shoes reset. The WLD is almost completely gone on the right foot but had gotten worse on the left front despite three treatments with White Lightning. I’m wondering if Ashke is allergic to White Lightning, because that is twice now I’ve treated his feet with it and they’ve ended up worse than they had started. I will go back to the iodine and a touch of hydrogen peroxide, since that seems to have worked the best. I also. Ordered some No Thrush, which I will be using on his frogs as a preventative. I am also going to treat the tiny bit of WLD on his right front with the No Thrush, just to see if the anti-fungal works on it. 

Wednesday night, I did a lesson with Amanda. We worked on the canter, mostly. We started with the 20m canter circle and then moved to the 15m collected canter circle. He was solid to the left, with just one skip when his right hind started getting tired. To the right, he kept trying to throw his haunches inside and I was really struggling with keeping him straight. Amanda addressed that by having us do walk-trot transitions while shoulder in. OMG. Ashke was so pissed. His ears were pinned, he was flipping his bit, swishing his tail and throwing his haunches back and forth. That may be the hardest thing we’ve done so far. We finished the ride with half-pass at the trot and again at the canter. The last canter half-pass we did ended on a half pirouette. 

My ride this morning was exciting. Ashke was in a mood and tried to drop on me while I was picking out his right front hoof. I smacked him on the shoulder with my open hand and he pulled back and reared. Over react much??? I grabbed the lunge line and took him to the middle of the arena to work out some of his angst. He cantered,, cross-cantered, and snorted in both directions until I stopped turning and just moved the rope around. I finally said, are you ready to stop yet? At the question, he slid to a halt and turned to look at me. I walked him back over to the hitch post, finished tacking up and lead him to the mounting block.

We trotted for 25 minutes on the rail, shoulder in, shoulder fore, haunches in and haunches fore, in both directions before he finally calmed enough that I allowed a walk break. Then we did our circles and leg yield to the rail, and finished the trot work with some very nice trotting half-passes.

We started canter work with 15m canter circles, with random walk-canter transitions. I was working on keeping the canter collected and him straight without losing the haunches. Then we turned and did it in the other direction. He was much better today at keeping his body straight on the circle. After we had completed 12 circles in each direction, we worked on the canter half-pass four times in each direction. He was great to his “hard” direction and had issues going to his easy “side”. Go figure.

We ended the morning with him standing in a pool of iodine and hydrogen peroxide eating his carrots and apples.