Day 4 & 5 of Phase 1

Yesterday I did get video..... but definitely wasn't our best ride and not a fair view at how far we are progressing. It was almost entirely my fault, as I was treating more like a "exercise" ride than an actual ride.

Today, though, was perfect! After a few trials and errors, she was moving off my leg and seat like no problem. We had one great serpentine where she stopped the minute I "froze" my seat and stopped moving with her in a passive seat. I had lightly, microscopically, jiggled the inside rein as like a "hey, I'm about to do something!" and bam! She listened :)

Also, her moving off my leg has become a no-problemo almost all of the time, and she is tracking up nicely at the walk and trot. I asked her to put more oomph into her trot today, and that worked out nicely. From there, we moved into slowing our trot both rising and sitting, and then back to a normal trot. Lots of light contact, halts, and transitions, and a few leg yields on the track and on a circle to further the "move off my leg" concept. She has a lot of this down. I'm afraid to say she is "on the bit" when I think she is, which is why video so y'all could see would be nice! But at this point, she appears to be swingy in the back and accepting the bit and moving off my leg and seat, etc. Progress, progress, progress!

Also I rode her around the pasture today and let her gallop and did a lot of the same schooling patterns we did in the arena, just to spice things up a bit. She seems to do well, and I feel good that I'm not making her "arena sour" by only moseying around in the covered arena. We have also been doing work in the outdoor arena and walks up and down the driveway and just hacking around the property.

But we've always done that... so it's nothing terribly new.... but the covered arena is still her comfort zone (and there are even some scary points in there haha!) so it's all kind of new..... I don't know, we just do it because we can, and because it's fun!

Wow, it's only day 5... we're doing good! This is all really just more of a refresher. At this points we're doing our normal daily workouts, just tweaking a few things....

Also, I have to attest to the pour-scrape method mentioned in the article I posted earlier (I had also seen vets do it for horses at the Rolex after the XC round, except with ice water and actual temperature taking, but those horses had also been doing something far more strenuous). After I finished riding another horse (another story for another day, like tomorrow....) it was about 12:30. I rode Greta from about 12:50 until 1:45 (I meant to do longer, but we got a lot done today) and it was about 90 degrees outside, probably around 92 towards the end of the ride. Nothing the two of them aren't used to, it is summertime in Texas afterall. Both Odin and Greta did sweat nicely (but I didn't work them into a drippy, stumbling mess, that's too much sweat haha!) and I tried the pour-scrape method. It really does work (I couldn't see why it wouldn't) and both of them (and Odin is far bigger than Greta) took only 3 rounds of wetting and scraping before they were back to a normal temperature. So try it, it works! And I felt much better knowing they were comfortable.