Sunday, January 20, 2013

Love my boys

After our walk on the western side Friday night, I originally wanted to do an easy flat school with Bud on Saturday.  The low wide oxer I set up earlier in the week was still up, and someone had added a cross rail.  The two jumps were sent on opposite diagonal lines, so you could school a figure 8.  They were calling my name, so we ended up jumping instead. 

Buddy was surprisingly good.  He marched forward right away and was not nearly as pissy about my left rein.  We didn't do a lot of flat work, as I could tell he was tired.  We did a couple warm up trot fences over the x, then I hopped off and raised it to a big X, about 2'6" in the middle.  I made sure to have a nice forward pace and tried to leave Buddy alone as much as I could.  He was great!  We ended up doing the two fences only about 3 times each before he got really tired, but they were 6 very nice fences.  And the best thing was we nailed our leads over the fences every time!  Since he has been so the past couple days he got today off.

Since Anna doesn't ride on Sunday, and I had given Bud the day off I hopped on Phoenix today.  He felt great!  We've stopped giving him bute and started him on turmeric root powder.  It's an anti-inflammatory and is supposed to work well on bony arthritis.  Considering it hasn't gotten warmer than 40* in the past two weeks, I was expecting Phoenix to feel pretty stiff. But nope, he was moving great.  We schooled leg yields and transitions.  Anna's been having some problems with them; nothing major just Phoenix needing a reminder. 

At the canter I did a little bit of lengthening and shortening as this is usually where he gets stuck.  It's harder for him to move out in the canter when he's sore.  Since he felt so good I threw in a couple lead changes.  He got them no problem!  I was expecting a buck or two, but got nice quiet changes.  We walked for a bit then I decided to pop him over the cavalletti.  Again, he trotted it calmly and gave the change if he landed on the wrong lead.  I only did the jump a couple times each way since he was being so good.  I'm so happy he's feeling back good and I think I'll try to school him over fences a couple times a month.

Love love love them!!

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