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...
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