Five Minutes of Trot

Friday I started the day at 5:15 waking up for the horse show. My student rode second in her ring and I had to battle a bit of traffic to make sure I was there exactly on time. We ended up being early, which was good. Both days went well for her, the first day had some unusual mistakes, including one silly one that put her just outside the score range we wanted to be in, boo, but that's why we signed up for two days.

The second day was everything we could have hoped for. She got her score and the horse had five clean changes in the test, and one clean mistake change on centerline, woops, but yay clean changes. She's planning on moving up to 4-2 at the next show, we're officially (and have been for a couple months) in uncharted territory for me as a trainer. Yay almost having an FEI student.

Friday I stuck around a bit to watch two of trainer friend's students before booking it across the bay and the central valley (over 100 miles to get there, I'm dedicated) to see TC!

I'm not sure he'll ever not be kind of an awkward
horse... Can't wait to tackle that mane

I managed to get out to see TC earlier than normal (thanks, funemployment), which meant minimal traffic and the ability to get to the gym for my TRX class that night without having to rush through time with TC.

TC is always quieter the earlier in the day because that's when he gets worked and when he isn't starving for food/attention. Definitely makes me want to arrange to ride in the earlier mornings before work sometimes, as does the traffic I hit before the clock struck 6am.

He's actually always been better to ride in the morning, something I should have taken note of and changed my schedule for. I prefer to ride in the morning too, but not as early as I'll need to. In a perfect world, I'll find an office to work in that's ten minutes away from the barn and I'll take an early lunch break to ride him around 10:30-11ish. Too bad the barn is out in the country and I doubt that any farms have enough data to warrant hiring a data analyst.

He LOVES having his face brushed

He even opens his mouth so you can brush his lips...

Weird

I talked to the owners a little bit, but it's more of the same stuff. He's doing well. He's sort of weird and spooky sometimes. He loves swimming. No news is good news though and I'm glad that he's stopped destroying his stall at least for a little bit, and he only spooked a few times when I was there.

No desensitization this week since the fan was off and I had nothing with me. But we did a little bit of liberty work in the stall. He's really focused on me when I'm in there as he always has been. He wants me to move him around so that he has something to do, which prevents the spooking for the most part. I feel like I go in there and he's just like youuuu you tell me to do things, please tell me what to do, should I move my feet, should I smile, should I stand slightly too close to you? and just stands there staring at me like I should be telling him things. I'm used to a horse like Rico who wants you to say one thing (or nothing) to him and leave him alone.

He's not easy to take selfies with, he's too big 
and he's too tall and sometimes he smacks
my head with his face

At least he put his head down

He's also now trotting five minutes! And his leg looks good. I feel like only miracle vet and I are going to be able to see the difference between the legs (it looks obvious to me, but the owners have rushed over a couple times now to see... nothing, so I am Ricky Bobby). There might always be a bit of thickening and I might be ultrasounding it every year or two just to make sure, but I'm feeling fairly confident that we're in the clear. Well, sort of. Not really. Oh well.

I spent a good long while with him, which was really fun. I felt bad because a lady was there and kept coming over telling me how big TC was and telling me that he was a baby (okay). I don't mind catering to non-horse people like that usually, but I just felt like this was the one hour I get with my horse every week (sometimes skipping weeks) and he's actually being a pleasant creature that I want to spend time with, so please go away and come back when I have him at home and am sort of sick of him.

He ate all his carrots and smiling is becoming a trick that he does with minimal provoking. He even sees my phone and knows to smile and be weird for the camera!

Hey you're holding that little thing, I can smile

I kept telling him to stay back so that I could get
a picture of him, he was sad about that

After he was all brushed and happily full of carrots, I headed out, getting home just in time to change and zip out the door to the TRX class. It isn't quite crossfit, but it's good enough and my wrist doesn't hate me for doing it. Although we did partner work and I'm used to rushing to get done as fast as possible a la for-time workouts. Turns out that if you ended before the rest of the class, you had to do burpees. Lesson. Learned.