River is getting temporarily neglected. My wonderful vet called me on Thursday to ask if I want to ride with Walter (Zettl)!! Holy crap yes!!!! Lucky for me, both she and another person who ride with Walter whenever he's in town have lame horses, so there was an open slot. Yay!!!!!
Naturally, I'm riding the Old Man with Walter.. of course, he hasn't been in regular work in a few years, so now we're in boot camp. Pretty much as soon as I got off the phone with my vet, I went to the barn to ride...
Thursday he was okay. He was very excited about the canter. So our canter work consisted of walk, pick up the canter, after about 2 strides back to a walk, repeat... more than a few strides of canter and he'd try to explode. Silly boy!
Friday I remembered my dressage whip.. which I promptly had to drop because he would not settle at the walk. The canter was a little better... We could hold a canter without running away for more than a few strides, as long as it was on about an 8m circle.
Saturday we did lots of shoulder in, haunches in, and haunches out at the walk, and leg yielding and shoulder in at the trot. Most impressively, we were able to canter a 20 meter circle!!! My abs are still sore from the effort of holding him together and keeping him up, but that's okay...
Did I mention he's an OLD MAN? He's 27 years old!!! And I'm still trying to work him down to being able to walk-trot-canter like a reasonably broke horse.
He had yesterday off, so today it's back to work!
Do you think his everyday bridle is suitable for our lesson with Walter?
Totally appropriate, right?
Very exciting! I think the bridle is a tad over the top though. ;)
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