Tuesday, February 18, 2014

Sweater Weather

It has been insanely warm here lately. Yesterday it almost made it above freezing and today it was all the way up to 40. I was literally in a sweater tonight when I worked with Katai and it was wonderful.

She was pretty keyed up when I started. It seems she's suddenly developed an attachment with one of the geldings in her field. The funny part is that the guy she chose happens to be the only other horse at the barn that is ridden dressage and he's about 17 hands of brown and white paint. They make an interesting couple.

Once I mounted up she was all business just like normal. I've been lunging her beforehand working on trot/canter transitions and today I tried walk/canter transitions. I've been using a very specific cue to get her to move up to a canter for the reason that I knew it would help under saddle. With her workman like attitude tonight I decided to go for it and asked for a canter after we had done a bit of trot work. She sprang right into it and it was a great smooth, balanced canter. I was so proud of her!

 I have been struggling a little on getting any type of consistent contact. She is young and green so it's not something I'm worried about, it will just take some consistency but she is the toughest horse I've worked with in that regard and loves to go around inverted with her head in the air so I've enlisted help. D and I spent some time chatting tonight so I have some ideas and we are going to set up a lesson as soon as we have an idea of what the weather will be like.

I put more mastitis drug in her frogs but this time my phone had died from the cold so I still don't have pictures. Tomorrow I'm going out again to take advantage of the warm weather. I'm hoping that in these next couple of applications I'll start to see some type of change.

3 comments:

  1. I am also on team "thrush-haters". Glad the weather is warming up for you!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thank you both! It's easily the worst health condition I've had to deal with. I think I was beginning to see some progress tonight though which was wonderful!

    ReplyDelete

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