Today I had a doctors appointment and then Dan had his hopefully final vet visit after his suspensory surgery. So I opted to ride him at Ashland before our vet visit because I didn't have time to take anyone else, and I figured it was good timing. I suppose I could have ridden one before hand and done him at Ashland after, but... then Tasida and I decided to do our virtual saddle fitting after his visit, so.. it worked out well. Oh, and the arena's at Ashland were all closed at 3 to prep for the show, so.. it just worked out nicely to do him before.
So... I got home and grabbed a quick brunch (leftover BBQ sammie) and we headed to Ashland. Sadly I only had about 51 minutes to ride, so I opted to go bareback. My thought was that I wanted to do dressage so... I figured I would hack out to the XC field to warm up and then trot in the water complex for therapy and then hack back to the arena and spend the rest of the time in there. So that's what we did. Except, Caroline had already flagged the XC course so I used Dan as my golfcart and "rode" the course so I would know where to go Saturday with Lyric. It looks like a fun course and perfect for her. Starter isn't tiny... and probably some of those BN fences would have backed us both off at this point, so... wise decision to listen to Jacel. Anyways... I let Dan pop over one or two the amoeba jumps while we were out there and then we did our water treadmill therapy.
Then we headed back to the arena and did our dressage work. I had already "warmed up" so we did some lateral work at the walk but mostly went straight into the trot and did our lateral work there. We played with leg yields and those are definitely better. I wanted to play with the half passes with taking my leg off like in the leg yield, but... I confused my brain. Because... which leg do I take off? The inside? But then he isn't bent around that inside leg... and.. .then he gets to where his shoulders lead too much. So... darn. But I did play with my seat bones and that helped dramatically. Except now I'm not 100% sure which is was. Ha ha. I think I needed to sit on the inside and swoop to the outside (of the bend), but.. maybe it was needing to sit and swing to the outside. Dangit.. I'll have to play with it again. We also did some turn on the haunches at the walk. We did a reinback. We did some lengthens. I played a little bit with shortening his stride without using the reins and using my thighs and core. Then we cantered and played with walk to canter to walks. We did a few simple changes of leads, trying to minimize the walk steps. My thought is that... I think if I get him snappy enough that he'll anticipate and just do a flying change. But.. ha. We'll see. It may backfire. We also played with the counter canter serpentine. He definitely has a harder time cantering when he's "round" vs a little hollow. But I tried to get him to stay mostly round-ish... well, just not hollow, but he almost goes from one extreme to the other. No dude... you don't have to rolkur.. just... lift your back. I don't care about your head but you can lift your back without putting your nose on your chest. We did manage to do some good steps without him falling out of it, so then we got out quick before he fatigued. But I did do multiple transitions. Overall, it was a good ride and we got some good work, despite not being very disciplined.
He got a nice hose off and we made it to our vet appointment perfect timing! While we waited for the vet, Dan figured out how to push the big button on the wall that automatically opened the doors. Ha ha! I really should buy him the button that talks. Anyways... he had a good vet visit despite being a turd ball and not cooperating by wiggling like crazy for his ultrasound. His tendons look great and he's cleared to do "whatever". But obviously, slowly build him up. We did talk about jumping and I told him I would definitely be smart about it but I didn't want to see how he did with it. And I also admitted to cheating a tiny bit. But now we can start testing him a little more.
Whoo hoo!! Then when we got home we had our saddle fitting zoom meeting. We did him last and... Tasida likes the panamera on him, though she suspects I should shim it up front. So I'll try that and see if I like that better or shimming it behind better. Then we put the loxley on him and... it works. It's a little "weak" in the middle so she wants me to try a half pad with front shims to see if it'll help fill out that middle part I guess. It's not ideal, but... it'll work until I figure out what path we're going to take. I don't want to buy him another dressage and/or jump saddle if he's not going to want to dressage and/or jump. In that case, I'll just go bareback or buy him a western saddle and we can try our hand at western dressage or just do trail stuff. But at least we have something that works. And bless him because... he really doesn't seem to care. I'm sure he would say NO if it was awful.. and I will keep an eye on his topline to make sure I'm not causing issues, but... I think if it's "close" he's okay with it. He's not a picky one.
We're still playing with "smile" too. Ha ha...
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