Daniel Floyd Breaux! You were so naughty today! And it hurt!!!
Unfortunately I ran out of time to ride him today. Well, technically I guess I could have. But I opted to take a bike ride with Mike instead and not have a 9pm dinner. And I had the saddle fitter come, so that took up some of the day. But it was okay. Except for the fact that Dan took offense. Sigh...
I was expecting the saddle fitter at 4 pm and was about to fetch ponies when she texted that she would be there at 4:30. No problem. Except I got distracted by working on Funny's halloween costume and she was a hair early. They were right outside their stalls eating hay around 4:10, but... by 4:30 they were up by Fleck's grave. Ooops, I'm so sorry!!! I caught them easily and then I put Funny in a stall so we could do Dan first. Because heaven forbid he has to stay in a stall for more than a minute if it doesn't suit him!
I put him in the cross ties and told the fitter that I wanted to double check his western saddle. Just to make sure. I figured the neck atrophy was highly likely secondary to his stifles or neck issues vs the saddle, but.. you never know. Plus, when Mark fitted the saddle, Dan was such a twit and wouldn't stand still and was being even more ridiculous than usual, so we didn't really get a good read on it. So anyways, the fitter does western too so she could check his. So while I was telling her all these things, Dan was making ugly faces and being his usual awful self in the cross ties. And then he grabbed the tie in his mouth and yanked on it. A few times. And the last time, it broke the hay string and ricocheted off the wall, right onto my skull! OUCH! That seriously hurt dude! I had a big knot forming as soon as it happened. I was so pissed I just apologized to the fitter and slapped him hard across the face with the lead rope. Twice. Because dammit Dan just effing stand still for ten minutes. That's all I'm asking. Just stop being so dang awful and rude. I'm over it! I felt bad for being so upset with him but for the love... just act like a normal horse that knows how to stand tied and stop being so distructive. Ugh...
Anyways... after that he mostly behaved himself but he was still making ugly faces. He quit chewing on the cross ties though. For now at least. We put the saddle on and I showed her where I was placing it. She said it was too far back. Okay... maybe that's my problem. And that might explain why my stirrups feel so far back. She did also show me that I could pull my stirrups more forward. Ahhh!! Magical. I had sort of tried but never really accomplished it. But when we set the saddle on the ground it opened the area up enough that I was able to slide them forward a good half inch. Nice! So anyways... she suggested that I slide it forward a good bit. Instead of having the back of his scapula hit the concho, I should have the back of his scapula hit the tree point. Which is where the screw is. And my buckroll incidentally. So, I may have misheard Mark. He did say the tree point but I thought he said the concho was my tree point location. So... anyways... she felt like it fit great once I slid it more forward.
Then we looked at my pads. She was not a fan of the toklat ones and said she felt like the hard rigid western saddle trees sort of need the thicker wool pads. So we put my western thick pad on and she pulled it more forward. (So the flaps of the front of the saddle are overlapping the shoulder a little bit) and said that the wither cutout should in fact be at the wither. Ha ha. I KNEW IT! Ha ha. Doh. And I should have the same amount of space in front of the saddle as behind the saddle, on the pad. But she liked how it fit him.
So yay! I'll just try using the western pad only for a bit, which is nice now that it's not so hot and humid and it won't get so gross. (especially since we'll be walking only for a bit). And I'll pull my saddle more forward and now my stirrups should be more forward too, so we'll see how that feels. Hopefully I can sneak in a ride tomorrow. It's the Ashland show but I don't ride til 3:30 with Funny, so I may see if I can sneak him over there for a quick trail ride tomorrow. Or maybe I"ll just go to Charlie Elliot. Even if we don't do the whole 6 miles, we can go 1.5 miles in and 1.5 miles back out or something. I may actually do just that. Because if we go to Ashland, he'll need a costume! And if I had planned ahead enough, I'd totally do just that... take him for the costume contest. But, I didn't plan ahead and it's too late now to come up with something, so.. maybe we'll do CE.
Anyways... my head still hurts and the lump is still there and my cross tie is still broken, but... I've mostly forgiven him. I do think I'm going to have to go back to zero tolerance again. It's just exhausting.
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