Ugh.. today was frustrating. I probably shouldn't have ridden.. I wasn't in the best brain space. But I tried to be smart about it. I groomed Dan and he was pretty good. Then I put the bareback pad on and the western shanked bridle and decided to try to ride around the neighborhood. Maybe do some work in the tennis court field. So that's what we did. Except Tim's dogs chased us again. And Dan didn't care, but... they get so close to his heels I worry they'll start nipping and Dan will kick one. Plus the one keeps barking and it's just really annoying. Especially because the non-barky one ended up following us for a decent way. We made it to the tennis courts and I picked up the trot and Dan was pretty good. Although he still suddenly hits the brakes sometimes. I don't know if it's because I'm bareback and bouncing... because he fatigues... because he just hits his stifle wrong???? But it gets annoying. And I'm trying not to get after him, but... freakin' go!! And keep going!! Well, then he got all hollow and alert and I realized that stupid dog was lurking up by the tennis courts and Dan was all freaked out. Not enough that he was doing anything naughty but enough that I felt like if I kept trotting, he'd be hollow and bouncing me and it might escalate to shenanigans. Which... arghh!! Come on... I just want to ride my freakin' horse. I can't take him on the trails because I don't have my truck. I can't ride in my arena because he's a slug in there. Now I can't ride at the tennis court fields because of some dog who is WAY past his property.... Sooooo aggravating! And apparently I'm PMSing too I guess. So then I got mad and thought... what if we chase the dog?? Maybe we'll scare it off. Or maybe Dan will feel brave and not be "scared" anymore. Or maybe we'll just have fun practicing our "cow work" in anticipation of maybe getting to go to Aiken in two weeks for the intro to cow clinic. (sigh... that might honestly be what's bothering me... deep down, I'm frustrated because Dan has been rehabbing for... well, freakin ever... and I'm finally accepting that we'll just do this western stuff and yet, I can't even do that yet because he doesn't even feel good enough for that, and that makes me super sad...for him.... for me....). So we trot off towards the dog and the dog turns and runs, then spins back and barks, then turns and runs... And then Dan got more freaked out and stuck his tongue over the bit. Sigh... okay... fine... I give up. Let's just go home.
So we walked home and essentially "chased" the dog home. It barked at us a bunch more, and the other dog barked at us. And they got close to his hind end and I yelled at them. And Dan put his tongue back in his mouth and aside from jigging once, settled down. We got back home and headed up to the arena.
Once we got to the arena I did some trotting. And he was okay. Just very behind my leg feeling and I had to keep clucking and kicking. And a few times I had to pony club kick him practically. And he felt like he was a western pleasure horse. He felt like he was barely moving and dragging his hind end. And it's just... not fun. I tried to be positive. We practiced one handed riding and neck reining and he's actually pretty good at it for the most part. We did some shallow serpentines, some figure 8s overlapped, some circles, and some stops. Not too bad. Then I decided to see what happened if I asked for a left lead canter. And he hopped right into it and gave me a fairly respectable left lead for about 7 strides.. and then fell out of it. Okay.. no big deal. Thanks buddy. So then we did some more walking, then back to trot. Still sound! Phew! Well, "sound"... I mean he feels symmetrical but I wonder if he's just bilaterally lame. We did some leg yield one handed, which was actaully quite decent too. Then we did some trot to walk to trot transitions. And then we trotted the alternating raised poles about 3 times. Then I trotted him to the small cross rail because he kept acting like he wanted to go towards it when we were leg yielding. And he perked up and might have even cantered the last stride to it and jumped it. He kind of landed in a heap and very quickly came back to the walk. We trotted a tiny bit more and then I got off to fix my exercises for Lyric that we had moved for the lessons. I put everything back and Dan just hung out where I left him. He did push one of my blocks around a tiny bit, but still... it's just not like Dan to be so... sane. :( It makes my heart sad because I think he really just hurts. And I've tried soooo hard and for soooo long to heal all his things...
Once I got it all set back up, and I had set the three ground poles for serpentining to a raised ground pole, we tried that. And... he knocked if off a few times. And once he even rolled his foot on it and stumbled. And I'm ashamed but I got frustated. PICK UP YOUR FEET. PAY ATTENTION! It's really not that hard buddy. Just... walk! With purpose. Sigh... I got mad at him and then he got a little better with it. So then we did the side pass over the ground pole. It took him a minute but then once he got it, he did quite well. I rewarded him and didn't make him repeat it. Except, then I got back on and we trotted the alternating raised poles again and then we backed between the two blocks that I made an alley/gateway with. Then I took him over the groundpole and we sidepassed both ways. And it was only about 4 steps each way because we started in the middle of the pole instead of on the end. But he was good. GOOD BOY! All the pets and the last of the cookies. Then we headed home.
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