When You Just Can't....

Change left to right in Butterball's case. Brain in mine. 

We had a mostly lovely lesson on Tuesday. Our warm up three poles to vertical then oxer went well and our ability to turn left is certainly improving. 

Follow more with your hands

Better

We had another conversation though about not flapping the upper body and instead just using the leg to get pony forward. PW said that the first few jumps I may need to leg off the ground and leg on landing so that we get his motor started earlier. Interesting because I've been playing with different warm up strategies too. Normally we have 3-5 minutes of hollow, resistant stuff before we get a nice forward connection. I've been trying leaving him long and low but forward and swinging and then picking up the reins which seems to be an improvement over insisting on a short connection from the get go. Different things, but same kinda idea. Get the forward from the start. 

Then we moved into course work, doing a few of the pieces first - five stride line down the long side, the first time in six and then subsequent times in five, then the in and out, and then the bending line.

Wish he weren't headless from this angle

The first time we put it all together actually got a little wooly. The quickness came when we missed our change after the five stride line and then I never really got us combobulated (clearly the opposite of discombobulated) again. The next round went better though. Then the third round we were cleaning up the five stride line, which we did, but missed the left to right change again in that corner. Eventually we settled for a simple change. PW was on us about straightness the whole time, and the last time through the one stride we truly got straight instead of anticipating the left hand turn and angling the second fence a tiny bit. I was rewarded with an excellent jump.

After the third run through we worked on the change a bit, but really struggled. The aids should be firm outside (new outside, so on our left to right, it was left rein) connection then swing the outside leg back and ask. I was definitely asking with too much inside rein during the course, but still couldn't get it, even over a pole after. PW got on but struggled with it too. We both agreed that he felt panicky about it as well even though we weren't getting after him about it at all. 

We ended up concluding that maybe he needs shoes back behind or maybe we need to look at his hind end in another way (ie hock or stifle injections). It was a bit weird because historically his right hind is the foot with less heel that I'm more suspicious of, but this struggle indicated left hind. 

I drove home pondering this and made it the complete hour before I realized I'm an idiot. I gave him his EWT WNV vaccine in the left hamstring the day prior. I gave it there since he does react to vaccines and I wanted to see if that was better tolerated vs. his pecs where I have been giving it. We've also done enough positive conditioning work that he will let me poke him in the butt now and will stand patiently waiting for his cookie. I definitely should have buted the poor pony prior to the lesson, rgh. 

So he got bute when we got home and then Wednesday off. Next time I'll have PW start him and see if the changes are better without a sore butt and without me messing up the timing the first go round.