October work

Walking in the beginning of October.

And here’s me thinking that I would from now on do an update over here at least once a week... haha. Well, lets see what we have been up to during October…

He’s had six complete days off, seven days of riding, thirteen days of lunging, three days of very quiet hacking only, one day of free jumping and one day of just walkies out.

Nice stretching in walk over the pole. 

We’ve been lunging with and without chambon, with minimal cantering, with more intensive canter work, over poles (one pole and then two poles) as well as over jumps. So, very varied lunging work. And we can see that he is starting to lift off the ground on the lunge.

And good enough in trot as well, no chambon here... 

Lift, but not really a stretch...

Polework has improved and he is stretching himself also over two poles now. Although when he is stiff on his shoulder, he finds this difficult… So, polework has in general improved, but we have had the not so good days as well. We have started to lift the poles off the ground as well after he has been going well over them on the ground.

..although at the same time not really dropping his back either.

Canterwork on lunge has maybe stayed where it was last month. We did some filming of the cantering one day, I think I’ll post another story of that later on. That is, to show what the difference is on his footfalls when he is working through his back and when he is not. It is pretty interesting to see – I think.

Then one day for a change in the regime we decided to lunge him over some small jumps. Gosh, he did like that! Became hugely enthusiastic and when he happened to touch the pole once or twice, he got well annoyed of himself. And we got some more canter work done as well.

Riding has been your basic training with walking and trotting work. Leg yields have been improving and he is starting to maintain his stretch and rhythm more consistently when yielding. Also changes of rein via figures of eight are now more consistent without changing of stretch or rhythm. I have tried cantering a couple times and although I felt on the saddle that he was just as bad as ever, he has in fact improved! Noticed it when viewing it all from the film…

This is why you should film regularly. He picks up the canter a lot easier, I can do several canter transitions without problems, and although he is stiffening up for the canter, he is nowhere near as bad as he was in the beginning of the year. He even shows the first signs of starting to relax his lower neck and use his back instead.

Almighty stumble, and it got still worse than this... 

The month started with pretty good work, but after the first week he became slow and sluggish – out of energy. And then he had a massive stumble one day when riding. It was a bit of a miracle that I stayed on, since he went down with all his legs and had a real struggle to stay upright and not fall over altogether. Anyway, it seemed then that all was well. No lameness and I could just keep on working him. However, after that he has had his stiffness returning again… In fact not straight after that one massive stumble, but then again he has had several other minor stumbles in the school both while riding and while lunging; the surface of the school has been suboptimal with the weather… it has become heavy, waterlogged and uneven. And Usko found that really difficult. He was more liable for tripping also because his hooves were growing really fast… After farrier we had considerably less tripping. Also I noticed that he could be stumbling at first but stopped it, when he was warmed up. Thus clearly showing the difference in his going when he was using his topline more efficiently.

I have not dared to ride with the chambon on since the footing is not that optimal and his stumbling. Stretching has been ok, but not as good as it was in the end of September. He has more power yet again, so is working properly most of the time, but since the stretch is not that brilliant, the progress has not been exactly huge.

We also had a day of free jumping! He loves it! Well, it could also be the oat bucket in the end of the line... ;) Nonetheless, he needs no encouragement to take the jumps. We started with four canter poles, then proceeded to put them up a wee bit. After that was looking fine, we took away the two middle jumps and put up the oxer in the end incrementally something like 50cm, then 80 and then about 100cm. Not sure about the exact figures, but it was something like that... First attempt at that about 1m failed since he touched the pole with his hindlegs. Got annoyed about it, and pulled them hindlegs up more with the next attempt and cleared it fine. 

Since he was out of energy the first part of the month, we started to feed him more oats. That helped, as well as the fact that he started to come in for the nights and get hay in the field for lunch. He sweated also quite a lot since he was growing his wintercoat. So, I first clipped him a trace, but when that did not help that much, I clipped him further leaving only legs and a saddle cloth area unclipped. That helped and he does not sweat excessively anymore. Clipping produced though another problem; how to rug him. At first we just had a rainsheet on him and nothing on during nights. But then he started to be really stiff and becoming slightly uneven… Obviously stumbling had not done any good to his shoulder, and the damp cool weather, standing in the winterfield with newly clipped coat would not have helped matters either. So, we got him a lycra-antirub vest to get a bit more protection on the shoulder area as well as preventing any rubbing on the chest, then changed the rainsheet to a lightweight with a neck piece, and had jammies on in the night. They also have been back to their bigger summer field for at least some days so that they will move a bit more instead of just standing around. He has still been stiff to start off with, so we have now brought the training intensity down a notch. More lunging of late and just walkies out in hand or very relaxing hacks. Riding done mostly in walk. And lunging done in bigger circles. Hopefully he will improve and loose his stiffness one of these days.