Pivot!

 Well... today Dan got his hind shoes! Patrick is awesome. It meant we had to change our plans of riding in the covered and practicing our test for the show tomorrow, but... we got hind shoes! Which, is awesome because now I'll know how much of a difference the shoes make vs not knowing if it was the shoes or the osphos kicking in. And that means that for our lameness exam on the 24th, we'll have shoes so we can decide if he still needs additional therapies or not. Yay! Thanks Patrick! We didn't do any pads this time, but will in 3 weeks if we feel like he needs them. 

 

So, instead of riding in the covered, we stayed home. We had to make sure we were done in time for the saddle fitter coming for Lyric. We started to get tacked up and then it got dark and thunder started rumbling. I debated getting on anyways... but then I saw about 8 streaks of lightning at once, so.. nope. Out you go! Please God keep them all safe! Fortunately the storm rolled around us and it didn't rain. I hung out with Mike in the garage for about 10 minutes and then it had cleared up enough that I went and moved the grid out of the middle of the arena so we could sort of practice our test. Then I caught Dan and then we got tacked up. 

 

We headed to the arena and did some warm up. He felt better in his shoes! We had a pretty decent ride. He was quite good and his canters seem improved! He did swap behind a few times on the right lead (not the left) but only the first time we cantered. His leg yields felt better and steeper and he was good for the trot serpentines. We ran through the tests once or twice. Well.. the first one we ran through parts of it like 9 times because I coudn't remember the darn thing to save my life. And then he was a bit naughty. He got a little strung out a few times and didn't respond to my half halts. So we had to practice some trot halt trot transitions, which helped. But overall, a decent ride. Hopefully it won't bite me in the butt tomorrow. 

 

But he's on bute for now and I did some more surpass, so.. fingers crossed. I tried to give him a power wash as he was FILTHY as a prebath for tomorrow, but... figured it wasn't worth trying too hard. And it rained again after I finished our ride. It came down pretty hard too. Yay! We needed some rain. Luckily I had them all in and eating dinner in an attempts to be ready for the saddle fitter. But I'm sure he'll be filthy again in the morning! Luckily we have time to bathe!