One step forward, how many back?

I had a hard time getting out to the barn this week and it showed. Rusty needs constant attention and work, otherwise he just starts backsliding into his pushy self.

Our first task of the day, the riding lesson, went pretty well. It's been raining hard all week and the horses have been in their stalls more than normal, so I arrived a little earlier than normal to let him get some kicks out before the real work started. He did some light round pen work and then I let him settle in with some hay while I tacked him up.

The lesson started out with him dancing around and not wanting to let me put my foot in the stirrup. I think I'm always nervous when our trainer is there that things aren't going to go well and it transfers onto him. Then when something like that happens I get flustered so much more easily. Our trainer said, "Listen, the one thing he's got going for him is that you'll cave. He dances away from the fence so you decide that you'll just get on from the ground, you have to stick with it. I don't care how long it takes." So we did just that and it only took about 3 minutes to get him to settle and stand quietly.

Our ride went pretty smoothly, we worked a lot on suppling him and asking him to accept the rein contact while maintaining the freedom in his gait. We did opening rein, after opening rein, after opening rein. He got it, here and there, sometimes it was frustrating but for the most part he figured it out. It took an immense amount of persistence and precision on my part. He is so sensitive, I can't even feel his mouth in my hand and he reacts as if I'm cranking his head around. Our trainer worked a lot with me again on relaxing and being very deliberate in my requests from him. Make them very small and light. The suppling helped him to open up his gaits and we're hoping after he learns the response of bringing over head, pushing out barrel, and stepping through with the hind end, it will be useful to combat his giraffe head antics.

After the ride we spent some time rubbing his sides. His girth area and directly behind it are often incredibly tense. It is hard, he swishes his tail, he flinches, tries to bite you, and generally hates it. I've been working on brushing and petting that area, but she wanted to get a little bit more intense and actually do some massage in that area. She did some for a few minutes on each side and his muscles felt much softer afterward.

Later in the day I headed back to the barn for Rusty's appointment with the farrier. As we were headed into the barn I was chatting with the other boarder explaining his tight sides and the work we had done earlier. She proceeded to start doing some light touching all over his body and he just totally lost it. He was charging forward, biting, throwing his head around, was able to pull away from me, it was totally ridiculous. He had to go to groundwork boot camp for a good 1/2 hour after that. Then he saw the farrier, than more groundwork boot camp. By the end he was not pleased with it, but he was okay with having his sides touched again.

I'd have to say, it feels pretty damn frustrating to think you're making progress in one direction and than have things go haywire in another. I know this is just the lumps and bumps of the OTTB retraining, but geez...

Getting an Education

Rusty has been improving in leaps and bounds! We had our first lesson after about a month without and we had 0 bucks!!! That's right, none, nada, zilch. I was ecstatic. Even better, we actually had some pretty decent trot work. He used to be very into sticking his head out sideways and neck straight up. It's pretty hard to get a horse doing that to go forward... Anyway he was getting a little carried away with that for awhile, but we seem to have conquered it for the most part. He spent a lot of the lesson fooling around with his head, up, down, sideways, but he totally got it more than a couple times. He came onto the bit and instantly everything felt so much better. His back came up and he drove forward. Yes!

Today we were scheduled to go out for a little trip to the beach with the other boarder. Her horse pulled a shoe yesterday so she decided to ride one of the other OTTBs. We didn't make it far. Rusty was totally amped up and couldn't even walk down the driveway. I retreated to the round pen for some schooling and she went out in the back field. Rusty was brilliant schooling, very relaxed, and for him very forward. I decided to join her in the field to shake things up for him. It was exciting to say the least...

The gelding that she was riding is pretty dominant and as soon as Rusty got near him he just launched himself in the air struck out at us came down and whirled around to get in a good hind kick. Luckily she's a very skilled rider and dealt with this all well and nothing got too dangerous. We had a couple more eruptions out of him, mostly when Rusty was "too close". Rusty was overall pretty damn good in the field. He spun toward the barn a few times, had a couple rearing hops around, but we did get some nice trot work. He also kept his cool when the other horse was losing his. I was pretty happy with him, it's really the first time he's been asked to work outside of an arena setting.

After we had managed to get all the spunkiness worked out and had some attentive ponies we decided to try another walk down the driveway. Everything was going swell until the neighbors Bernese (spelling?) Mountain Dog came bounding and barking toward us. Rusty took one look at him, spun around and bolted for the barn. There was a split second where I thought I might not be able to bring him back to me, but he settled into a quiet canter pretty quickly and we turned around and walked back toward the dog. I decided to get off and walk him up and let the dog give us some good barking. The dog obliged and Rusty thought it was all very scary and uncalled for. I happened to have a mint in my pocket so after he settled down and was just nervously eyeing the dog I gave him a mint. That pretty much sealed the deal that Bear wasn't really a scary dog... at least for today.

I'm pretty excited about this weekend, feels good to make some progress. The trainer and the other boarder thought his movement looked a lot better. I'm so glad I decided to take the extra step to make sure his body was feeling all right. We're going to get in another ride tomorrow which will make four days in a row. I love spring! Can't wait for the time change so I have some more daylight after work!