No pictures, cuz the mud. So much mud. Anyway, horses are dangerous, I tell ya. I can hardly use my right arm since my last visit to the barn. I put Cody in the arena so he could roll and then I scraped a pile of hair off him before tacking him up. I decided to grab my dressage whip since Cody has lacked a little inspiration lately. And here's where things got dangerous. I stood Cody at the mounting block, reins in my left hand, whip in my right. I transferred the whip to just a few fingers and then used the remaining fingers on my right hand to grab the mounting block and move it closer. The mounting block is homemade, two by sixes, pretty heavy, and apparently the remaining free fingers on my right hand are not strong enough to move the block and I pulled a muscle in my forearm. Ug. So yeah, I'm a wimp.
Free lunged Cody first to get him moving, left lead canter just about every time he was asked. Rode for about a half hour. Not a spectacular ride. I think I need to step back and work with him on just responding when asked. We're stuck in a catch 22. He's reluctant, I nag, he tries everything but what I really want, I nag more, he's more reluctant. Rinse, repeat. So we might have gotten a left lead canter, it was hard to tell. When I got off I lunged him to the left and got the correct lead so that was our stopping point.
I keep thinking, "I can't wait til we get a new horse to work with and Cody can retire" but I really do need to keep him in shape so I can ride him while Daniel rides Haji. But it'll be a whole new set of issues to tackle once we move him to a new location so I guess for now I just keep him in shape and keep working on his confidence and anxiety. Looking forward to a few rides down the road when the new horse arrives, I just hope he rides out with a new horse as well as he did with his BFF Steele.
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