A (new) new beginning

In March I had a much needed talk with a co-worker who owns a horse. The point of the conversation? That at 30 I know plenty about horses, especially THIS horse, and I shouldn't be letting other people make decisions for me about what's best for him. The result of the conversation? Lyric and I moved barns at the beginning of July. Our new barn is much fancier than we really need. It has an indoor dressage ring, an outdoor dressage ring, a jumping field, a track around the pastures with some mini-cross country jumps, and trails that lead to even more arenas we can use. Oh, and it's across the road and about 100' from access to Duke Forest trails we can ride on. The turnout is also pretty much ideal. They rotate pastures (~ 2-3 acres?) once a month for each of the 2 groups of geldings (4-6 horses). The mares have a larger field and don't get rotated, but there are also only 3 of them. So now we have access to multiple riding terrains and buddies.
The change has been incredible. We went from barely being able to ride once a week without massive muscle soreness to riding 3-5 times a week (even in the 100+ degree heat) with only a little bit of stifle soreness to show for it. His stifles took a major hit these past couple months with the crappy turnout, so I'm hoping he's just sore from building muscle. I noticed tonight that he's no longer dragging his hind toes on straight-aways in the outdoor dressage arena (which has less deep footing, but still). So I think we can actually start making some goals!

Goal #1: Continue building strength. I tend to get a bit impatient, so I don't want to push him too hard too fast. Right now I figure we can handle 20-30 min of "work" and then go for a trail ride. I'd like to get that to 45 minutes of walk/trot/canter, but I need to remember to build up to that over the course of a month or two.

Goal #2: Work on his curling. If I wanted to show Arab Costume, Lyric's head position/speeds are great. We've got a great long trot and hand gallop. I'd like to be able to control his speed just a little better than that, and part of that is teaching him to go "through". Right now leg = faster tempo and rein contact = bend your neck at the 3rd vertebrae. We need to develop more "oomph" and throughness, which will hopefully come as we add strength.

Goal #3: Keep it fun! We have all these new options for what to do, so I want to make sure that I don't bore him to death with drilling or circles. There's no reason we can't work on not curling out on the trails or pop over some tiny jumps to keep things interesting. But again, I have to remember not to overdo it!

Goal #4: Keep track of our progress. I'd really like to start taking monthly conformation shots to track how his body changes over the next couple months. I wish I'd gotten a picture the day I moved him, but oh well. I'm sure there are plenty more dramatic improvements left to come!

Umm, oops

So I sort of forgot about updating the blog when things were going well (there was a pony to ride, after all) and then didn't feel like it once stuff started going badly, so yeah.

Here's a brief summary of how things have gone...

Oct and the 1st half of November went great. We started to work on getting Lyric more balanced and using his back-end rather than dumping all the weight onto his front end. Then he started getting resistant at the trot. As in, I'd ask for a trot and we'd end up stopped all together. I let myself believe it could be a training issue for awhile (probably too long), but got the vet out right before Christmas to do hock injections.

When I returned in January after visiting family for Christmas, Lyric was thrilled with his new hocks. He did beautiful transitions, started doing some baby lateral work (spiraling in/out, quarter turns on haunches at the walk or "square turns"), but by the end of the month he was starting to balk again. Just a little at first, but it got progressively worse until around the beginning of Feb I just gave up trying to ride him. He'd started balking at the walk, so something was clearly off.

We haven't really found a likely source of the problem yet. We tried a bute test (2 g morning/night for 3 days, 1 g morning night for 3 days) and saw no change. My trainer thought he might be selenium deficient, which can cause a general muscle soreness. So he's on a Se supplement and he did look somewhat better on Saturday when I lunged him for a little while. He also got a chiropractic adjustment on Wed. He only had 3 vertebrae out, and the chiro said that they shouldn't be out enough to have caused the problems. I'm hoping to get on later this week (we got rain and snow yesterday, so I think the ring may need a few days to recover!) and see if he's progressed any.

Meanwhile I've been given some general instructions as far as body work stuff goes (basically, poke his muscles). He's tight/sore on the left rear side. Whether that's a consequence of the life-long right front funky foot, muscle soreness from increased ability to use his hocks, or some sort of scar tissue problem, I don't know. I'm still hoping that this will all just magically go away and I'll have my cooperative pony back. So far all I know is he is/was sore in his left lumbar region and doesn't respond to bute (so it's probably not bones/hocks).

Horses sure were a lot simpler back when I was a teenager. You fed them, put shoes (or not) on them, and cleaned their stalls.