3 Horses, 2 Days

Yesterday Amy did a light flat hack with Buddy, so I hopped on Leo to see how he would be in an English saddle.  I switched his bit from a plain loose ring snaffle to a kimberwicke w/ a plain snaffle mouth piece and added a running martingale.  Both were very helpful!  He wasn't hanging on my hands or doing his best giraffe impersonation.

We worked on having a nice, soft, relaxed walk.  He wants to go, go, go and will jig a bit after about 10 steps of walk.  Luckily he's very smooth so his jigging isn't too bad.  I was able to get a nice, soft, and somewhat round walk before we moved to trot. I schooled transitions too, getting him to back off my hand in the downwards and to relax before asking for an upward transition.  Going to the left is much easier for him and we were able to get pretty decent trot and canter.  He'll pick up the left lead form the walk but I had to do a trot to canter to get the right lead.  Going right he likes to flip his head and bulge out and it's easier to contain him at the trot than walk.  Considering how much better he was with a bit/martingale change I don't think it will take too much work to get him going nicely.

Today as I was getting ready to head out to the barn I got a text from Anna saying Phoenix had dumped her and her hip hurt.  I immediately imagined the worse and told her I'd be there ASAP.  When I got there she was sitting in a chair and said that he had spooked and jumped sideways.  Luckily Connie was there and heard it, and helped Anna. We have a little storage shed attached to the barn right next to the arena that we store the jumps in.  One of the barn cats had been back there and knocked over a sprinkler and a couple of standards.  Anna was just trotting past and Phoenix caught it out of the corner of his eye and spooked.  She was caught of guard and fell off.

I'm glad that he hadn't been naughty, but upset for Anna.  Her confidence hasn't bounced back from when he dumped her a couple months ago and this didn't help.  She had gotten back on and walked around but I told her I'd get on and school him.  He felt lazy which is good because in the past he'll spook at nothing when he's got too much energy. 

Buddy's stall is at the end of the barn aisle, right next to the arena and he was very pissed that I had ridden Phoenix first.  He kicked the wall every time I went past and finally I had enough and yelled at him.  After that he just made angry faces, including this gem.


It's a good thing Phoenix doesn't care about other horses lunging at him.
 

After a quick flat school with Phoenix I jumped on Bud bareback and trotted around for maybe 10 minutes.  He felt good, but lazy.  He'll have an easy week this week, and next week we'll start jumping again.  I was thinking about taking him to a jumper show the college girls are putting on, but I'm going to be helping them run it and I don't want to have to worry about my rounds or horse.  I'm hoping our next show will be May 19.