Not Feeling His Age

During my four day weekend, I hopped on Rico of course. This time I was smart and put on the reactor panel saddle so my lower back didn't hate me so much.

All he wants to do is stare at stuff. He looks so young in this
picture :)

I'm kind of digging this saddle. It's not the right size for me and I think that if I were going to spend the money to actually buy one, I'd get one with a better rise for me in addition to a different seat size and block. It seems to fit Rico quite well, and the coolest part about the Reactor Panel saddles is that you can fit them to anything AND the even cooler part is that they can do remote fittings for $75 plus supplies. So they send you everything you need and then you get someone to basically do a live video (she has skype, facebook, whatsapp, anything really) and she walks you through the fitting. I'll be sure to post about that when it happens.

There's a large part of me thinking of switching over to these saddles when I finally save enough money to justify buying a new saddle (not holding my breath, remember how I just moved back to the bay area? lol). I love my custom but being able to adjust the fit myself (and for so little, I pay like $350 if my saddle needs its tree adjusted) sounds amazing.

It was such a pretty evening at the ranch

Anyway, after I tormented TC on Sunday, I headed over to the ranch to ride Rico. I brought my equisense (and TC's girth, which fits Rico better than Sunny's pony size girth) to keep track of what he's doing. He's really not doing a ton, but I do feel a difference in his abilities. Whether it's that he's actually getting fitter or that I'm just delusional, I don't care. He does look like he's putting on the tiniest bit of a topline again, his butt is just a bit rounder. I dunno. Maybe I really am delusional.

We started out with a walk down the road and he was AMPED. He kept wanting to prance and had his head straight up in my face. Then he'd stop dramatically and stare at a cow before snorting and prancing off again.

In the arena it was more of the same. He either wanted to zip off with me, yank me out of the tack, or stare at nothing. He didn't really want to do anything in between. I had to kind of poke him with the spurs and push him around a bit to get him to pay the fuck attention to what I was asking him to do, which was a riveting... trotting in circles.

The canter feels really good when he isn't trying to yank me out of the tack with his "bucking" behavior that he thinks is a good time. Like I've said, TC is a nice horse and everything, but Rico has like a 9 canter. This horse can fucking canter. Just his natural, under-muscled, arthritic canter is way better than TC's canter. He's definitely gaining strength in the canter and even gave me a lead change! His first change in a long time.

Seriously, I got basically no other pictures

The equisense, which I used on Sunday, thinks that he is sound, which is nice to see. It makes me low key question the equisense, but you know. He's feeling serviceably sound, and he does feel a little better every time I get him out. Either that or I'm just getting used to him feeling like crap. I'd like to think that as he gets stronger, he'll be able to support those arthritic joints a bit better, but we'll see.

Monday afternoon, I grabbed Kate, Riot, and Rico and we all went on a trail ride! Rico was feeling great, super sound and was offering piaffe and passage everywhere because he was a bit wild (for him). At the end I swapped with Kate so she could play with it too! I'm so glad he's doing well, lots more trail rides and arena rides in our future.