December is always a tough month, with lots of cancellations at the last minute. And it's aggravating because it throws my schedule off and I don't get paid unless I work... but today, I chose to be grateful for the last minute mid day cancellation. I went to the first barn and did three horses and then was able to come home. My first client made me some delicious frittata's that I ate for lunch. And then, the weather was cold but not awful so I headed out to play with the ponies.
I decided that I would do groundwork with them and since they were all up by the arena, it was easy to fit all three of them in! Yay! Lyric went first and then it was Dan's turn.
He was cheeky today and chompy. But he stayed engaged and we were able to do a full 25 minutes without him pulling away or getting loose or tearing off. Yahoo! We started with pillars and then we walked some poles. I had set up a fan so we did that. He has a much bigger stride in general than Lyric so he was a bit tight even in the middle. We did try to shorten him to fit him in the narrower side, but it was hard for him. We also walked the poles with the ends raised. We did that a few times.
I also made him weave in and out of the poles, like a maze, to help work on lateral suppleness. His hind end swung out a few times but he also managed to bend for most of it. We played with the shallow serpentine over two poles end on end too. He's pretty good at that. We did some leg yields in hand too.
I did also try the side pass over the pole. He was pretty good side passing one way... (why is it so hard to remember now.. it's only been 5 hours!) but pretty resistant the other way. I think going right is the hard way. I'm guessing it's his stifle? I did get a nice side pass going the other way and the we did manage to get a short side pass going the hard way. He can do it without the pole so then we added the pole back in and he got it. I didn't push it too much because I figured it's because it hurts. But I did want to push him a tiny bit to help strengthen it. In theory. Hopefully I didn't screw him up. We then went back to all the other games and he was fine.
Then it was time for Funny. But when I tried to bring Funny into the arena, he reached over the gate and took a big ol' chomp out of her blanket! No sir! So rude. I think he was mad it was her turn to get cookies.
