Friday- I managed to coerce a family member into going out and walking miss Cadence for me as I was volunteering at the equine hospital and didn't know when I'd be done. The Mare had been relatively good, so I felt fairly confident in leaving her in the hands of someone non-horsey, since I knew there would be other people at the barn. BAD idea. Miss Cadence TOTALLY took advantage and spent the whole time rearing, flipping out, spooking, and all that fun stuff. Thank god they had a firm grip!
Saturday- Cadence started off pretty well, and aside from one little spook was being pretty good. Then, someone inquired as to why she wasn't doing more. After this point, she did 180's on her hind legs only, rearing leaps into the canter, bucks, head tosses, wild sideways scoots, and everything else under the sun. None of it was full blown panic attack spooks, but more I am an insane 6 y/o mare who has been on stall rest for 1 month and I feel pretty damn good kind of spooks. Relatively sittable & controllable for me; I only had to call heads up once. At the end of the ride, I informed the onlooker that we had in fact walked, trotted, cantered and jumped! How's that for back to work?
Sunday- Our first scheduled day of trotting, & t went pretty damn well if you ask me. I had the distinct pleasure of coming down hard with a cold (seriously, yesteday morning I felt fine save for a bit of a sore throat. Yesterday afternoon I felt like somebody had knocked me over the head with a bag of bricks, and lit my throat on fire. Add one hell of a runny nose and some allergies into the mix? One bag of roaring fun for me.) so I only managed to stick it out for 25 minutes of the ride. Still, we did 4 or 5 little segments (like a few circles or the length o the ring) of trot and not a single stride of canter found its way into the mix! There was lots of head shaking, prancing, and running through my half halts... and her trot was extremely exuberant (she'll have beautiful extensions once they're trained into her properly) with some pretty flashy high stepping knee action, but remained controllable if not sittable. There were a few near canter incidents, but she kept it in check surprisingly well considering this was her first time trotting in... well, since x-mas when she had limited arena turnout.
That brings me to my final point- today Cadence starts back on limited arena turnout! Hopefully my ride tonight will be slightly more... relaxed as a result.
yuck, hope you feel better soon! I can only imagine cassy after a month on stall rest, it would be very similiar to your description of Cadence.
ReplyDeleteI read your post on behind the bit about that sales video, very proud of your response! That horse was ridden way too deep, it was just ridiculous. Anyone that defends that riding doesn't understand equine anatomy, his shoulder was not freely moving as it should when he was so deep, he tilted his head to the side quite a bit which is very common when they are ridden btv and does no one care that their vision is inhibited in this position. Disgraceful. I've given up on commenting on sites where there are so many oohs and ahhs over something that is so ugly.
Thanks, that's actually really nice to hear. I'm not really fond of critiquing things like that; my own experience is minimal at best, so I don't really have the knowledge and seniority to make comments on things like that... in my opinion. Still, something THAT blatantly obvious (and yet clearly ignored) really bothered me. It's nice to know that it didn't come off as way out of line.
ReplyDeleteNo, not at all! More people need to speak out and in that video it is so blatant. He is constantly titling his head for heaven's sake! What that means is the rider is pulling him in so much that he can no longer tuck his nose in any further and the restraint on the reins is causing the head to tilt by way of the second vertebrae. That people can't see that is really beyond comprehension in my book.
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