Almost Back to Work

We are almost back to work now that the air has been good for the last four days! TC and I have been riding bareback in the bands this week doing all his postural work, including starting training the Spanish walk undersaddle. I'm hoping that if I get a decent Spanish walk on him, I'll be able to use that in warm up to loosen up his shoulders! Plus it gives us something to do. 

Yesterday, we trotted briefly and he didn't cough at all. Today I'll do the same thing and then he gets tomorrow off. He'll then do a light ride at walk, trot, and a little canter on Saturday and if he doesn't cough, I'll bring him back into full work next week. 

TC is the world's most bombproof horse, I'm sure
of it, he dragged me down the road to play with 
this fun toy

While TC has been walking, Sunny has been able to do more work. He definitely isn't as sensitive to the smoke given that TC had two coughs per walk for the first couple of days and Sunny hasn't coughed once. He's only 14.1 or so, his lungs are much smaller. 

Yesterday, Sunny and I changed up the poles in the arena. I was chatting with Kate about my jumping and she said that I will sometimes freeze 4 strides before the fences. She and I had a super interesting discussion about how that's super common and why she thinks it develops in (most) riders. So my goal is to work on that as much as possible while I'm still jumping relatively small (as the freezing only gets worse over larger fences). I notice that it happens mostly when I don't see a distance. And I noticed that happens mostly when I'm cantering a horse who I can't adjust easily. 

If you have ever wondered what TC's
tail looked like braided, wonder no more

Enter: Sunny, the world's least adjustable creature. He literally has one walk, one trot, and one canter. I've been working on changing his trot stride length to almost no avail, he really moves more like a baroque horse than a non-baroque horse. His little legs like to go very fast when I put my leg on, which is unhelpful in lengthening his trot stride or adjusting his canter stride over fences. 

I put out two lines on each side of the arena slightly in from the rail so I could go around them. They were both set at a comfortable five for him, which I did without measuring so I can't even tell you how long his step is. I just eyeballed it and then cantered him quietly through. 

Then I challenged him to get six and four at random. He was actually quite successful, but it was tough for him! To get the six, he was almost breaking and trying to go sideways to make the line longer. To get the four, he had to really bust his little butt to get down the line. It was really good though and reminded me of a lot of lessons from ten or fifteen years ago about how to adjust strides in lines. 

Considering biting my foot while we
are riding around bareback this week

He's having so much fun with the poles too! By the end of the ride, he was super energetic, which is unlike him. I figure I can kill two birds with one stone with the poles: get him more forward so he's more pleasant for me to ride and work on my jumping in between jumping lessons. 

Fingers crossed the air stays good through the weekend (and for the next several years if I'm crossing my fingers anyway) so that I can try the adjustability exercise on TC! I have a feeling he'll be a little easier to adjust.