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!