Broken Down Old Horse

Thursday morning (of last week, wow these posts are late) I woke up feeling much better about everything, having dropped TC off at his rehab place the day before. I didn't have any anxiety about going out in the rain to make attempts at wrestling wraps off my horse, chasing his leg around to cold hose him, and then wrestling wraps back onto my horse. Instead, I headed up to the barn to ride Rico, who had been TC's babysitter and so hadn't been ridden yet that week.

Too busy being a babysitter and not looking like a GP horse

It was raining on and off, so I took my time brushing all the dried mud off of him, picking all the wet mud out of his feet, and tacking him up. Rico went from being very happy to get attention to being a bit pissed off that attention was leading to being ridden. 

When the weather cleared, I swung into the tack and it felt so wonderfully familiar. Although man, he is wide, how did my SI joint survive so many years of riding him?!

Rico and I went straight to the arena, just because if the footing wasn't good enough I figured I'd go down the road. Luckily, although wet, the footing was fine for a bit of fun. I gave him a nice long walk warm up, with lots of circles and serpentines to loosen him up before trotting. 

But Rico felt terrible to trot and canter. He hadn't been ridden since Thanksgiving, and even then I only really rode him once or twice and we didn't do much. Rico was super lazy, he refused to do any lateral work and was struggling in passage. His piaffe was more like a slow trot. The changes were still great though, and I played with a few lines of 3s and 2s. But what was clear was that Rico is finally getting to a point of retirement where I can't just pull him out and school all the GP stuff anymore. I was slightly bummed, but understood that he wasn't going to last forever.

Not going to be this horse forever unfortunately

I took him down the road to get a change of scenery. We found some cows and goats, and Rico's enthusiasm for bovines spooked them a bit. Poor cows. 

We had the ability to either continue down the road or head down the dirt access road. Continuing along the line of torturing Rico, I saw that about half way down the dirt road were some pretty big puddles. So we wandered down that road. Poor Rico was made to walk through a puddle, because it stretched across the whole road so there was no way that we were going around it. The puddle was about 4' wide or so, so he couldn't even step over it. Such torture. TC, on the other hand, would have enjoyed walking through the puddles, probably so much that he wouldn't have gotten out of the puddle though.

At the end of the road, we stared at the vineyards for a second. I thought about walking him across the road down to the winery, but I had to get back for Christmas eve dinner and I felt bad that Rico was so pathetically out of shape.

Love this view

I went to turn and Rico coiled a bit. So I tipped forward and let him go. My poor, broken down old horse, who can't manage a few steps of passage or piaffe, who wouldn't go on the bit anymore... bolted. 

He was galloping as fast as he could (not impressive speed) and was darting sideways, dodging the smaller puddles, and then two large ones. 

We were rounding on that big one, the one that goes across the whole road (with two 8' no climb wire fences along the road) and I went to slow him down a bit. I stretched up and pulled back, but Rico was in TC's bridle (fat snaffle on a horse who has never respected such a soft bit) and my failed attempt at a downward transition merely set him up beautifully...

for a huge JUMP across the puddle. 

Now, the horse is not an event horse, so he does not understand jumping across things. So he got right up to the base of the puddle, I felt his front end pad the ground, hind legs coil under him, and he cracked his back over the top of the puddle, landing on the other side fairly lightly for a horse who really doesn't do anything more athletic than taking long naps and eating impressive amounts of food.

Someone got a lot of Christmas presents!

Afterwards he celebrated. He struck out and bucked and leaped around. By the end of the access road he was back to trot but full of it. We turned onto the main road and there he finally gave me his powerful piaffe. He transitioned seamlessly to passage, which he felt more than capable of doing. 

It was raining by this point, so we trotted the last segment of the road back to the ranch. Damn horse was totally sound and round at this point. If it hadn't been raining, I would have put him back in the arena and made him do his work RIGHT, but I caved and took him in. 

I was so glad that he was feeling good, he had me worried for a second. But he's a manipulative asshole, he knows how to play the crippled old horse card when he thinks that my ideas suck. I love him for it, but I do miss having a horse who thinks that all my ideas are the BEST IDEAS EVER. Visiting TC later today hopefully.