Back to Riding (And Then Backing Off Again)

We had a pretty crazy heat wave this last week so while I did manage to ride TC in two new saddles (he said maybe to one and no to another) earlier in the week, I ended up spending the later half of the week and the weekend just hanging out with him and trying not to burn up. 

The best pony

I've gotten a lot of support from people with the saddle search, I have almost too many people to contact right now so no one is getting contacted. That's annoying but it's okay, I'm letting myself take the time it's going to take to figure this out. 

When we were actually riding earlier last week, I did a few rides where I worked on transitions and some lateral work. I figure that I'd like to hit the ground running when I find a saddle so I'd like to get him a little stronger and address any issues that I'll be annoyed to hear from an instructor. 

He feels so good in the contact these days

His shoulder-fore is great, so we've been doing that in walk, trot, and canter, but only doing haunches-in at the walk for now. Mostly because I can't coordinate myself to do haunches-in in posting trot and his canter is wanting to get haunches-in right now anyway. We also touched on the walk pirouettes which remain stellar. 

The transitions are getting better. One of the things that gets extra bad when his saddle doesn't fit is the transitions, so I'm clicker training correct posture in them to help him build the muscle back.

Sitting shockingly well at the canter for being
very out of shape

Then the heatwave hit so on Friday I rode for like ten minutes and then gave both TC and Rico a bath. Rico has been really interested in hanging out with me recently so I figured I'd take him out, but I'm not about to ask him to do anything but eat cookies and cool off in this weather. He was BESIDE himself when I took him over for a bath and then brought him in and trimmed his mane. I don't think he misses being ridden as much as he misses being doted on and groomed, so I'm going to add a few sessions a week to his schedule. 

TC was also happy to get a bath, and he had a mane trim earlier in the week. I usually leave his mane a little long because it's easier to braid, but we aren't showing any time soon so I trimmed it quite short. It's honestly ADORABLE. I think I'll leave it short until we start showing again. 

I think it's so cute short!

I need to get them both out on the trail together again, I think Rico really enjoys that and TC doesn't mind it. Hopefully it'll cool off and we can start doing that once a week again. 

It's so nice to spend time with both horses at the same place. I'm feeling fairly motivated to keep TC at the ranch indefinitely. 

There are some major downsides to being there, but seeing Rico every day and having TC be in a huge pasture is fairly motivating. But we are coming into pigeon fever season and I am petrified that TC will get it. I'm going to take every precaution I can and probably pull blood regularly as we come into the fall. Odds are he's been exposed to it since it's also prevalent at his breeder's barn. But still, I am prepared to basically hospitalize him the moment he shows any sort of uptick in values, I am not taking any risks on this horse! 

But as long as he doesn't have any open wounds and I keep him doused in fly spray, we should be okay. That, the small/not covered arena, and the drive are the three big downsides I have down there. The arena is small but rideable and the drive is annoying but with him in pasture, I can take 2-3 days off a week and not worry about him... but pigeon fever? No thank you! We may end up somewhere else each fall even if we do stay there indefinitely.