Keeping the Streak Alive

Yesterday marked a momentous occasion.  For the tenth consecutive day, I threw a leg over at least one of my horses!

Okay, so it's not that big a deal, but I haven't ridden that many days in a row since busting my knee back in 2009.   Actually, when you get right down to it, I haven't had a streak that long since somewhere in 2008, before leaving for my ill-fated working student position, where the only horse I got to ride was my own -- if I were lucky enough to get the free time.   Sometimes I can't believe I actually used to get on 4-8 horses a day, usually at multiple barns.   Where the heck did I find that kind of energy?!

As of the last update, Jabby had two good post-chiropractor rides, and then I was fairly sure I thrown my money out the window.  Last week we started again at square one on Monday, and then built back up over the course of six days, with short but productive rides.   By Thursday he was feeling pretty fabulous again... I think we only did actual work for twenty minutes; we had a brief walk/trot/canter warm up, including nice easy departs mostly off the seat. For the most part, if I sit my butt quietly in the saddle and ask properly, he will roll immediately into a calm, quiet canter.   If he loses his balance and stumbles into it, or gets excited, I ask him to walk or halt, we regroup, and try again.   It's a small thing, but before he got adjusted these kinds of transitions were completely out of the question.

At that point, he was being so springy and adjustable that I decided to try for the crossrail I had optimistically set up. (Okay, HJ Lady set it up, and I changed it from "Deep Spot Hunter Exercise of Doom" to "Encouraging Crossrail of Flowerdiddlies.")

On the first attempt I completely dropped him on his face and flung my bulk around in a panic.  Ace riding, I has it.  Jabby sucked it up like a champ and jumped anyway, which nearly got me a well-deserved jostling out of the tack. I apologized profusely and thanked him for saving my butt, then we regrouped and tried again, this time taking my own advice to Chill Out, Man.

I used a 20m circle to reclaim the sproingy canter, hit Cruise Control, and got the hell out of his way. He found his distance and neatly jumped up and around all, "This ain't no thang," and I even managed to keep my act together with an auto-release and everything. We cantered away, transitioned down, and traded lots of praise. Lather, rinse, repeat to the left, at which point I just dismounted and let him bury his snout in the nearest patch of clover, because there was nothing left for me to do but screw up again.

HJ Lady had caught the last half of our ride, and she offered feedback:  his flatwork looked much improved, his jump was round and tidy, and while his canter is looking better and better, it still has that ever-so-slight wibble in footfall that marks him a gaited horse. Le sigh.

Friday we played hunter pony, where I basically let him trundle around on his face because he was doing it quite calmly and happily, despite the blustery wind and the ATVs that were ripping around the track on the other side of the arena. (The barn owner has a side business; the kids and I have joint custody of the fields.) They bothered me far more than they bothered him:

The Honey Jabber don't care!  The Honey Jabber don't give a sh*t! 

A "quiet" moment with only one bike running.  

So he obediently walked, trotted, and cantered as requested, and lobbed over some small jumps for funsies.   I probably could have made more of an attempt to get him rocking back on his hind end, but, eh. I'd rather have him being flat and lazy than curled and tweaked.

This sort of thing is so typical for him, and maddeningly so.  The ATVs don't bother him.   Neither did the Tarp of Death.  On Wednesday we were taking a ten-minute mental health mosey around the farm, and when a big ol' buck leapt out of the weeds five feet to our left, the Moose held his ground while I screamed like a girl.  (In my defense, I was expecting a bunny, not an impromptu pair of antlers at eye level. Also: I ride a 17-hand horse.  Things should not be at eye level!)

The Thursday of our fabulous ride, rain clouds were looming on the horizon just as we got started.  So as part of our walk warm-up, we rode around to all the blankets that had been airing out on the fences and flipped them waterproof side up.   Jabby continued to be unbothered.   Clearly, a spooktastic animal.  I should just turn him into an Extreme Trail Horse and be done with it.

Anyway, we continued our good rides through Saturday, when Jabby's energy finally started petering out, so he got two well-earned days off.   Yesterday, we got back into work, but we were at square one all over again.  His head was never in the game and we spent most of the ride working on calm transitions, quiet rhythms, and as much long and low as I could coax out of him.   Then I went out to lunch with Dom, who came back to the farm with Herbie to hang out.  We managed to cobble together enough spare and borrowed tack to dress both Willie and Jabby, and we headed out on a lazy trail ride with the Wonder Pibble in tow.

Willie looks like a pony from up here!

We had a nice, quiet ride through the nurseries despite the odd raindrops that spattered occasionally, and the fact that I had no stirrups on my loaned saddle.  It was the first time anyone but me had taken Willie on a trail ride, and though he gave me a bit of a pouty eye once he realized that I was on Moose, he behaved like the rockstar he is.    While I hardly have to worry about Dom's riding ability, it's nice to know that Willie can fill in the role of "hubby horse" if I ever need him to.

I feel like the blog has been rather Jabby-centric lately, but Willie is still definitely getting plenty of miles in.  Mostly we have been babysitting a boarder's Red Mare on her first forays into the wild.  On another blustery day when I didn't want to risk getting caught in the rain, we did some actual flat work for the first time in a while.   Nothing fancy, just a quick warm-up and then tooling around our riding field with no reins.

Today, we're in for lots of rain, so the streak may be broken.   I can't be too disappointed, though, because since our freak blizzard at the end of October, we've mostly had one gorgeous episode of autumn weather after another.