Back (on track?)

Well, today I had a lesson scheduled with Nancy, but I awoke this morning to a VERY sore back. It took me about 10 minutes just to roll myself out of bed. I remained optimistic, thinking that maybe a few ibuprofin would help, but it really didn't. Luckily, Nancy was happy to get on and ride for me, since I figured that even if I got myself INTO the saddle, I would a)be useless and b)probably not be able to get back OUT of the saddle later. Bummer.
It was really cool to be able to watch Dee go, though, and I'm glad that now Nancy has a feel for what I'm sitting on. She rode for about 40 minutes or so, just walk, trot, canter and then some cavaletti. It took about 15 minutes for Dee to settle in, and then she was very good. She's also quite fancy! I never knew! And, she's a VERY cute jumper (she had to over-jump all of the cavaletti).
I'm going to truck her back up to Nancy's Thursday to ride her around a bit. Nancy will be at Millbrook, but she said to just go up and use the ring. I'm hoping I can get there, because I had some issues on the way home today. There appears to be something weird going on with the trailer breaks... they started breaking of their own volition. I'm going to try some electrical grease on the connector, because I think my connection may be the issue.
Now, my back has been pretty good lately. I'm not entirely sure what I did to make it hurt so badly, but I assume it's just something that's going to happen now and again. One of my friends just got her massage license, so I'm thinking of going to her soon. I mean, it can't hurt. Today was pretty terrible, pain-wise, and I even had my leg go numb at one point on the way home. Not good. It's a little better tonight. I've been wearing my back on track brace all day, which is a godsend, and I've taken lots of ibuprofin. Hopefully tomorrow I'll be back to my usual low-grade pain.

Jumping Fool

Dee is so utterly brilliant. We had our second ever jump lesson with Nancy today, and you would have thought the mare has been doing this her entire life. Today's exercise was a little grid. We started out simple, with just one pole. Dee locked onto the pole and actually JUMPED over it. Next it was half of a cross-rail. No issues there. Next was the full cross-rail, and she just quietly popped over that going both ways. So, Nancy set up a pole 18' from the cross-rail. We figured that might back her off or make her a little nervous. NOPE. She locked onto the cross-rail, jumped it, BALANCED HERSELF and cantered the pole. BIG pats for that. Then the pole turned into a cross-rail. We thought that this would SURELY make her hesitant. Wrong again! She once again trotted the first cross-rail, landed, took a canter stride and jumped the second. No big deal. So THEN Nancy made the second fence a little oxer, with one side of it down. I don't think Dee even noticed. So then we put the back rail of the oxer up completely. Now... this is really when you would expect a baby to go 'whoa, this is weird'. Not my mare. She jumped the cross-rail, balanced and jumped the oxer beautifully. So then nancy had me go around and jump the blue box. I jumped up her neck a little bit at it, but Dee saved me and jumped it nicely anyway. Then we went around to the other blue box, which had a very short approach out of the corner. Now... steering isn't always our forte. I tend to lose either the shoulder, haunches or both when we have a tight turn, and that did happen, but as soon as she saw that there was a jump, she straightened out and just got to it. She jumped it brilliantly. I honestly cannot believe how amazing this horse is. She didn't put a foot wrong and acted like she's been doing this her whole life. It was like she said 'well, you taught me how to do this last week, so now I know all the answers.' She is brave, clever, and a lovely jumper, which means I'm a very happy camper! I honestly CAN'T wait for next week. If we continue along this way, we'll be eventing in no time at all!
Now, as promised, here's a picture from Rachael's visit. Not very good, but oh well.

Clinic Preps

This weekend is the Jon Holling clinic up in Sherborn, MA and while I'm excited about it, I am also nervous nervous nervous. We're going to be in the "Soft Novice" group as opposed to the other novice group, which is "Novice/Training" and DEFINATELY not us!!
This past week was a bit of a waste, and he had a LOT more time off than I wanted him to, but I'm not too worried. Last Monday (the 29th) I walked into the barn to find that his front left was all scraped up. It was hot and fat and he was head bobbing lame on it... GREAT! We were scheduled to truck down to Nancy's the next day, but that was not looking likely, so I called to leave her a message that my horse is an idiot and we might not be sound tomorrow. I cleaned the scrapes (Luckily that's all they were) and deduced that he had probably stuck his foot through the fence. After the scrapes were cleaned, I put ice on the leg for about 20 minutes and then poulticed it for the night, hoping maybe it would be magically better in the morning.
Needless to say, it WASN'T magically better in the morning... it was still hot and still fat. He WAS, however, sound on it, which made me extremely happy. We missed the lesson, and I re-iced/re-poulticed and took him for a hand-walk. I went back that evening to take the poultice off, put more ice on and re-bandage. Luckily, it was looking a lot better. By wednesday the swelling had gone down quite a bit and he was still sound, so I elected to do a little flat work. Thursday, I showed up ready to really put him to work and discovered that he had ripped that left front shoe off. Our farrier, being the WONDERFUL person that he is, came out within an HOUR of me calling him in a panic and fixed the problem, but I had run out of light for riding. Friday we did more flat work, but it was kind of an awful ride... neither of us was in sync. He was tense and pissy and I was impatient. After forty minutes of arguing and not getting much accomplished, I finally just had him do some stretchy work, which he loves, and called it a day.
Speaking of stretchy, I am really excited about how great he's doing with that. He really takes the contact down and stays engaged behind now, so I really feel like we're improving from the stretch work now.
Saturday we had a lesson with Jen, which wound up being somewhere around an hour and a half long. We spent about an hour on flat work, drilling transitions and working on lateral movement a bit. I really feel like he's starting to GET the transitions up and down, but I also feel like I need to help him out a little more. His trot work is really improving... he is more consistantly forward and has become easier to ride at in terms of asking for more trot. His canter is, as always, a work in progress... he has a pretty good canter naturally, but I never feel like it's as good as it could be. We're getting there... he's more forward than he used to be, at least. After working on the flat, we did a little jumping. Jen set up a 9' bounce and we continued working our transitions before/after it to get him more uphill. Eventually, she shortened the distance a little, and I really felt the quality of his gaits improve through the exercise... he was responsive, up in front and jumping in great form by the end. Now we just need to get him a little more careful over smaller jumps! He jumps very correctly most of the time, and uses himself well, but he sometimes gets lazy... especially when the jumps are small and/or plain.
I'll post more later (or after the clinic, if I don't find time before then!).

I LOVE LESSONS

Tango and I had a lovely flat lesson with Jen yesterday. We worked a ton on transitions and by the end, I was getting the nicest canter transitions that we've EVER had... he was responsive and forward and I don't think he got the left lead wrong once! Also, I didn't get yelled at quite as much for having my leg too far back! progress! I do, however, need to work a little harder on bending the elbow a bit more and keeping my thumbs up all the time... and of course fix my leg completely.
I learned that if I can just keep him nice and forward all the time, we CAN have nice transitions... a nice change from the wishy washy, dragging on the forhand ones that I'm used to.
That was not, however, the best part of the lesson... I think that the best part was the fact that he was SOUND. He felt great and apparently looked great and I may finally have a wonderful, sound horse. I fret about things like that constantly, but so far so good.
Well, we're off to go hacking!