Punted Down the Path

Day two was at Kate’s barn. I ended up staying at the ranch Sunday night to Monday so that I could get an early start. This time I loaded up both horses. I’ll talk about Sunny later though. 

Most interesting creature first

TC was very excited to go to a place with the pony! The pony hates him though... Sunny is skeptical of most horses (except Riot, somehow Riot has been deemed acceptable by Sunny), but Sunny especially hates TC. I think because TC is chock full of problematic optimism and therefore doesn't care that Sunny doesn't like him. If there's one thing that Sunny hates, it's friends who don't care that he hates them. 

Because the trailer is a bit small, Sunny had to go in first so that TC could have the large rear spot. So, I put Sunny in first, loaded TC up, and then Sunny squealed at him. Worried that TC somehow was able to poke Sunny's butt, I looked into the trailer and saw that the most TC could do was… look… at Sunny. Sunny thought that this was unacceptable. And knowing both of them, TC was probably staring at Sunny the entire ride to the facility while Sunny squealed and stomped his feet at him. 

This horse has always been so out behind, there
are things I want to change about his hind end still
but this is much improved! Not a cart horse anymore

When we arrived (luckily for Sunny it was only a 15 minute haul), I took TC out and put him in the round pen, then grabbed Sunny. I swapped them out and Sunny hung out in the round pen while I took TC over to the clinic. He got worked on and the clinician was super excited to see that he was feeling really good on Monday after the work on Sunday. He felt so good that it wasn’t very long before she asked for Sunny and had me get on TC. 

I handed Sunny off (I will discuss him later) and then took TC to the trailer to tack up. I came back and we started our ride! 

All the connection issues he's ever had went away
except a slight inclination to curl

We managed to get the fabulous walk that we had the day before back right away. He felt so loose and the work felt easy. We worked on the same exercises as before, but things progressed even faster than the day before. Things that I had to slowly work toward the day before were accessible from my seat. 

He felt so good that we were told to trot! And I’ve never had the horse pop into trot so excitedly on the first try. He’s been really hesitant to trot sometimes, but not this time. He needed way less aid to get him going and no aids were necessary to keep him going. That was mildly terrifying, he was just so ON and so immediately responsive. I didn't realize how much he has been just low key behind me until he wasn't. 

She had me do the same work that we did in walk in trot. TC was on it. It didn’t take too much aid to ask him to maintain his new posture, it was like he was thinking “FINALLY I can MOVE now!” 

His core is actually engaged, what a miracle

We played with asking him to push forward down the long sides and his trot got SO NICE. He popped way up in front, something that I’ve long thought I was feeling on him but now realize that I’ve never felt on him. At one point, he got so excited as we passed another horse that he transitioned into a slight passage like trot with his front end up even higher. 

I had my clicker with me and so I clicked a fair amount for the various things he was giving me. TC was so smug about it, which cracked us all up. After the first click it was like he said “about time” and took his cookie with the most hilarious facial expression. From then on he was on fire. 

After some big medium trots in each direction, he started to get tired, so I opted to be done for the day. We talked about the plan going forward and I’m so excited because she offered me remote lessons! She seemed to really love TC and thinks we have big things ahead if we stick to this work. I told her I would need some hand holding, especially in the smaller arena at home and without a crowd of people for him to show off in front of. 

Glancing into the future, I'll go into more detail
later but I'm not riding him this far up on purpose

I put TC in the round pen to relax while we worked with Sunny, but once he was loose, he decided to see what his new body was capable of. He played and played and played. I haven’t seen him play like this since he was a baby! I mean, he and Rico will trot and canter around together in pasture sometimes, so he does play I suppose. But this was a different kind of play, like he was experimenting with his body and getting excited to feel what it was capable of. 

He bucked a lot, galloped around, stopped, reared a few times, pawed a lot, and he even played with a weird Spanish… trot? type thing? I don’t know how to describe it but if I could get him to do it inside a passage, it’d be an eight at least. 

We ended up having to pull him out of the round pen because he got kind of sweaty and gross. Luckily he was happy to hang out with Kate’s assistant in the corner while I rode Sunny and then we were on our way home! 

I can't get over how excited he was about all this,
he was so focused but also so joyful

I’m SO excited about this clinic. It was definitely life changing for us. I’m excited to have my horse back and to have found at trainer to help us through this critical time of rebuilding him. I'm so unbelievably grateful and hopeful right now.