Neighborhood Ride

 Today was super hot. Like.. ridiculously hot again. Ugh.. and Dan has puffed up his nice winter coat already. Poor guy. He is definitely going to need to be clipped sooner rather than later. 

 

I rode him this morning and opted to ride at home vs Ashland so I could have more time to do work and study. So we tacked up and I got on. I decided to go for a short hack to warm up instead of going straight to the arena. And honestly... I didn't know quite what I wanted to do. So we headed out. He was a bit up and forward but not nervous today. Yay! We hacked to the tennis courts and then... I decided I would do a little trot in the soccer field since we were there and then we could go up and down the little hill there. But then I realized that the field was in the shade a good bit and... we decided to just ride there! I started with zig zags up and down the hill. Then we did some trot transitions. He was tripping a good bit. I don't know if it was the terrain or his atrophied shoulder giving him trouble or a bit of both. And his stifle stuck once but he recovered. So we did some trot transitions and then some canter transitions. And then we played a tiny bit with some lengthenings and some serpentines. He felt pretty good. He was a bit fast and runny but still felt mostly loose and swingy! He wasn't tense and tight and running, so I figured... why not!? He was also maybe a hair above the bit at times, but overall he was pretty good. Tracking left was harder... he felt like he wanted to fall in onto my left leg instead of going out to the right/outside rein. But we got some good moments. We worked pretty hard for a good 15 minutes or so I guess and by then he was really sweaty. So we headed back home. I figured that was actually a pretty decent work out and considering how hot it was, there really wasn't a need to do more. 

 

So he got a nice long rinse and then he got to go enjoy the rest of his day. 

 

I did do the red light on his atrophy again today. It's looking pretty bad again now that his air has dissipated. But I'm not sure whether to keep doing it or not, especially since the last time he acted so painful with it. Sigh.. maybe the red light will help??