Isabelle is an Arena Baby

First on the agenda today was lunging Rosalynn to see how she is doing. To the left, she is sound! To the right, with the bad fetlock on the inside, she is off but not as bad as she was. So she's not ready to ride yet (I'm disappointed about that) but there is major improvement and I'm optimistic she'll be riding sound again at some point.

After we blew through cleaning most of the stalls, I rode Isabelle. She started out really forward and actually threw in a token buck. The funny thing about the buck was that then she immediately flinched and I could read her mind exactly... "Oww! Maybe the old twist and buck isn't such a good idea any more..." I figure that Isabelle and I are about the same age right now and I can relate. After that, she was actually pretty good! When she would do her stiff-as-a-board routine through corners I was able to get her to lift her shoulder and bend, and her trot to walk transitions were pretty good. Her walk to halt transitions are always bad because she has the terrible habit of tensing through her jaw and resisting the halt, but I am finding ways to release her jaw and make the transition prettier. I haven't jumped her in months because we've been focusing on flatwork, but how fun is that? (Not much.) So I took her out onto our makeshift cross-country course to pop her over the little cross-country jumps I built to prepare students for our recent horse trial and she was immediately snorting and blowing and leaping into the air, thinking I've been on this hill before and there were not these weird things up here!!! Is that a brush jump or a sleeping monster who will surely devour me if I get too close???!? You've heard people talk about stall babies, right? They're those horses who spend their whole lives safely tucked into a padded stall and can not deal with the real world. Well, I guess Isabelle is an arena baby. We did manage to jump all three of the scary things (the tiny bank, the straw bales, and the little wall covered in brush) and then we ran and porpoise-bucked and generally made a big deal of ourselves. Using the same jaw-releasing technique we had just worked on in the arena, we managed to do a halfway decent downward transition from the canter. HA! Still, I think a running martingale is in order the next time we jump outside.

My final ride was Cory. I rode him because a student didn't show up for his lesson and I actually had time to kill before I had to feed dinner. This was ride #5 for Cory, and the first one I did without lunging him first. It was also the first ride with no one else on the property. I swear he plods along on the rail like an old school pony. I spent so much time clucking and squeezing that I think I'll carry a dressage whip next time. I don't want him dead to the aids before we've even gotten started! We walked for five or ten minutes (I don't know, it seemed endless at his pace) and then trotted around the arena a few times each direction. I almost took him out for a little hack around the property but I figured two firsts were probably enough for one day. We have yet to make any trot circles or to ride with other horses in the arena but we have plenty of time. I don't think I'll even canter him until next year. He's my first nearly blank slate and I want to do this right. Every other horse I have started has belonged to someone else and so they came with early training and quirks picked up from other people. We've had Cory since he was eight months old so any quirks he has are our own. I love not having to hurry because someone is worried that I'm wasting their money by taking my time. I look ridiculous on Cory, by the way. I keep my weight under 120 pounds because of all the ponies I ride, but I can't help my long legs. I haven't let anyone take my picture on him yet and I'm not sure I will.

Other than riding and lunging today, I did the usual feeding chores, cleaned five stalls, trimmed two mares' hooves, made a feed store run for a salt block for Teddy and a five-way vaccine, visited with Teddy and Dorothy and Laura for a while, came home and vaccinated the two heavily pregnant mares, and taught a lesson. Woo! (Should have been two lessons though, grumble grumble.)