Dressage and a hack

 Dan and I went and got Kelli and Marvin today and went for a ride. Dan started out nice in the walk. We did our short loop around the lake and then a little bit of lateral work at the walk. Then I picked up the trot and he felt lame. I couldn't pin point it, but... not great and worse when I switched from right to left. Kelli saw a head bob but didn't see anything in the legs, although she thought she saw his hip dropping. But then when I dropped the reins and let him carry himself how he wanted, he wasn't doing the head bob and his pelvis evened out. So... ???  

 

I tried a little canter and the trot got better, so we kept going. Maybe not the right answer... I don't know. We had an okay ride. Not because of the rein lameness.. for the same reasons our rides recently have not been great (dressage). We're just struggling to get the nice deep round throughness we had at one point.  And now I'm panicking it's because his neck hurts and I'm pushing him too hard and need to back off.. and then panicking that by not riding him more correctly he's holding himself in poor posture and thus creating worse neck pain. Sigh. 

We did manage to get some decent counter canters. We did not even make an attempt to change even when I asked, but.. oh well. We then did two really decent canter half passes, so I went back to trot and got a nice soft through trot with a lovely extended trot and then some mediocre halts... and then a good halt, so we quit. 

We went on a longer than lately hack with Kelli, but not terribly long. In the middle of it, we trotted around in the field to encourage his hocks to be engaged. And he just seems to not want to bend around my right leg but we did manage to get a few good moments, so then we went back to our hack. 

I'm trying to not be frustrated, but I am. 

The sunset was pretty though! And it's only going to drop to 60 degrees tonight so he gets to be naked!