Saturday, January 3, 2009

Great Day to Ride

Today was a hot day in Texas. It reached almost 80 degrees or maybe it was over 80...not really sure. Of course, tomorrow it will be 40, so I guess it's nice to have a pretty day now and then.

I rode in my friend's saddle today. She bought it for her horse before he died and it's been sitting in my house ever since. Wow, it was an awesome saddle. It needs to be rigged a little differently, but it was really balanced...it was also 30 pounds.

I rode Deli for a little while, but I could tell I wasn't doing her any good. She was kind of gimpy with me on her, but she looks great on the ground running away from me when she doesn't want to get caught, so it's hard to know what's going on with her. Can horses fake being lame? I have someone who is interested in her as a therapeutic riding horse and I may be ready to send her on. It's so hard because I have had her for 8 years and I will really miss her. However, she isn't a lot of fun to ride anymore, as she is pretty slow. Of course, that makes her really safe for kids for lessons and for my husband, which is a great thing. It's not like I can sell her. I just need to find her a good home where she can do light duty. I have had a couple people ask me about her and I just can't seem to make up my mind what to do. On one hand it would be nice to save a little money. On the other hand, I fantasize about her making a comeback. I don't get how she can look so good on the ground and feel so gimpy from the saddle. I wonder if I worked her more in hand, if she'd get stronger and more sound under saddle or if she'd just get worse. She really needs to be a broodmare somewhere, but today's horse market doesn't really afford many people who want broodmares. She's got great Shagya bloodlines. I wish I knew really why she was lame. I know the official diagnosis is ringbone, but it just seems like there is more going on that that.

Then I rode Liberty (after chasing him around for 20 minutes while he played his catching game) I put him in the round pen, where is will be my guest this week while we work on this catching thing. I am taking him to the Dr. Deb Bennett clinic in East Texas at the end of the week so I hope to learn some insight into his behavior and learn to work in better harmony with him. We did a lot of canter depart work, which we had never really done in an "arena" setting before. He wasn't really good on his leads, but he was good about listening, taking the half halt and taking a nice, quiet canter depart. I also rode him in the combo bit today and had little fighting. I had it on the second hole so more nose/curb action than bit, but he was good. It was a short, but productive workout. Just getting him to pay attention to me in the field was huge. Then I tried open the hot wire gate (it was off of course) which didn't go so well, but I did finally get him to stand still next to it. Good progress for the day. I'm sure he will get lots of exercise running around the round pen tonight.

Tomorrow, it will be cold.

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