Just in the nick of time and the pinnacle of Poncho's weekend.

To start off I'd like to mention that Poncho has been "punished" by the barn. Apparently they think he's been liberating his friends from their grazing muzzles. Because apparently they are too stupid to realize they can rub them off, or pop them off (some have breakaway ones). Even though I have witnessed some of them do just that. But noo it must be Poncho ruining their best laid plans. So poor little man has been kicked into the "diet" field again (atleast it's only at night time - although that does mean he misses his friends). Poor, poor Poncho.

Moving on yesterday started out as a beautiful sunny day, a little cool but beautiful non-the-less. I got out to the barn around 11 and it was just starting to get slightly cloudy - no worries though. I went to get Poncho and he whinnied for me and came halfway to me (come on he can't give me coming all the way over - too much effort) so I met him halfway. He was so super calm while I was grooming and tacking up. To speed up the process he even stretched his legs out for me. It was priceless. I decided to ride out in the gelding field so we cut across the ring so as to not walk across to much gravel. (I think I'm going to have to put shoes back on him for the summer BOO.) Since he did just exfoliate his whole sole on his fronts. We lucked out and managed to snag a few minutes riding with another lady at the barn. I love the opportunity for Poncho to work with others and still keep his focus. He was a smidge uppity jogging and jigging sporadically. No biggie I mean for the last two weeks he's only been worked 3 days a week when he clearly needs and likes 5-6 days. Once our riding buddy finished we headed to the ring to blow off some steam with some nice trot work. I didn't feel like pushing the canter. Good thing too. He gave some lovely trot work and is improving on softening to the bit with each ride. After about 8 minutes of that we called it a day. And once I turned him out and was giving him a nice wither scratch (I might add he liked it soo much he groomed me back too so cute) it started drizzling. So I figured okay a little mist while I work Nite no biggie. Then it really started to rain. DAMN I didn't bring my rain coat. So I called up mom and she gave me the okay to not bother. Score. As I was leaving Midnite was hiding out in the run-in. Poncho true to form was out in the open getting poured on. What can I say he's a nature lover.

Today I was planning on hacking out in the mare field with Mom and Midnite. Poncho was ecstatic. He finally infiltrated the lady field with all their lady like smells. He was nice and forward and coming on to the bit. However Miss Nite decided she was not having it there could be no boy in her field. She got real cranky and unresponsive to mom. So we left and headed to the ring. Poor Poncho he was so upset that he had to leave since he had finally reached his ultimate goal. However in the ring he was a superstar. Even though it was majorly sloppy from all the rain (luckily mainly only on one side). His trot work was some of the best I've had in a while. His canter to the right wasn't half bad. To the left he just didn't want to give me the lead, he finally did but I had to work my ass off for it. Then we took a mini break. To keep up with his memory we were going to do the cross rail again. I clearly need to come up with a new plan of action for our rides now that we are adding a few jumps in. He gets so frazzled with his lead issue that jumping is just too much. After two tries and knocking it down I hopped off to fix it. Then walked around to regroup some. We came at it from the other direction this time. It took several tries he just wants to rush. (Que placing poles next time -coulda, woulda, shoulda) Finally we managed to get over it twice. It wasn't pretty by any means but I praised him like crazy anyways. We just have to work through this small mind block he's got going on and then we'll be golden. I know he can jump like a beast.

MAJOR catch-up!

Wow have I gotten behind. But I am not with out my excuses. First my laptop died. Second I got a new job - an oh so glamorous stall mucking job. Third I am also working with my dad to try get more money. So I have been pretty swamped. But still I have managed to get Poncho worked atleast 3 days a week.

Initally Poncho was horrible. Running all over the place and ignoringme completely. Luckily that only lasted for a few rides and then he was slowly working his way back to normal. He's still a bit crazy in the big gelding field but improving.

The secret to working on his canter is circles. So simple yet so easy to forget. He moves out beautifully on a circle. Although on the left lead he still has his issues picking it up but he will eventually pick it up for me now. PROGRESS.

We've also been working on coming on the bit more now - he constantly wants to fight against it no matter what. But he's slowly coming around to the idea a few steps at a time. When he gets it - it is perfect. So hopefully soon he'll decide the fighting is not worth it.

Also we've started to do some jumping to spice things up a bit. Apparently he forgot he could jump though. It took almost a half hour by my guess to get over it the first day. Goodness did that take some patience. Then the next day it didn't take as long but he was getting so strung out he couldn't jump. But I was able to get him to collect somewhat after a few attempts (we actually had to trot the jump) and then we had some success.

And that's the short version of everything. I had a huge list of things I wanted to mention but I'm currently at a loss of what they were.

My horse is a jerk, but I think he's perfect!

On Tuesday he was high as a kite. Run, run, run is all he wanted to do. But once I got him to calm down for a minute I got some b-e-a-u-t-i-f-u-l trot and canter work out of him. Although we did have to go into the ring after a few minutes because of his uppitiness.

Today he was a totally different horse. I like to tell people Poncho has about 5 different personalities undersaddle. Well today he proved me right. He was stellar for his hillwork walking with a nice big swinging stride. Then we went to trot down the field. He balked big time! Then he finally got moving, sometimes letting him canter first will make things better. So what the heck I thought - lets canter. Canter he did, then all of the sudden we cantering back to the water trough. So we turned around and trotted, maybe this was a mistake I don't know, back down the field and then walked back up. Then I decided to go into the ring to get some "real" work done. Nope that wasn't happening. His trot work wasn't horrible BUT I know he can do so much better. His canter work was nonexisitent. To the right he was majorly falling in to the point I just couldn't do anything he was totally nonresponsive to any aid I was giving. Then the left he didn't want to pick up the lead again, surprise - not. So I brought him back to a trot to try again. BIG mistake. He was speed trotting ramming into everything. I got him steadied and finally got him to pick it up again. I didn't even get a chace to feel if we got the right lead before...BAM he was off. Running through his right shoulder (big surprise again huh?) full speed ahead. It got to the point we were running out of ring and he wasn't stopping or turning. So unfortunately I ended up practically standing up in the stirrups trying to slow him down. After I finally got him to a trot we did a few circles then left the ring. I never really ended on a "good" note but I ended on a calm note. That counts for something I suppose.

I could speculate a million things that could have brought this on ranging from his hatred of a leather girth when his winter coat starts to shed to he misses having a riding buddy to the wind finally got to him. Who knows. Who cares at this point it's over. Tomorrows another day.

I will however add that he did pout by the water trough for over an hour once I turned him back out. I finally went back out there and gave him a good wither scratch, he even groomed me back, to get back on his good side. Silly pony. He's so dramatic sometimes. Following his pattern I susupect he'll be fine tomorrow. Gosh I love him so much, some people will never understand it though.

A visit from the Farrier and the Vet!

Poor ponies had such an eventful day yesterday. And to top it off it was super windy and cold! Just the perfect equation for success - not. Luckily they were both very good for the farrier. We did end up not planning things out perfectly for time so the ponies had to wait for awhile in the paddock behind the barn for the vet to get there.



Poncho did not appreciate that he was in the same paddock that the friesian was in last week. He thought he was quite smelly. Anyways once the vet got there the wind was HOWLING! And of course the first thing they wanted to do was watch Poncho go undersaddle. I think overall he held it together fairly well. He was ouchy walking over the gravel going to the ring but he did just have his feet trimmed a half hour ago, roughly. So I get on we walk a lap then I pick up the trot - then the next thing you know we're cantering down the ring and he slams me into the fence as we're turning. Nice way to start off. Silly, silly pony. So from then on we stayed in a 20m ,give or take because Poncho was not really paying attention, circle at the trot. Until it came time to actually canter. He did not want to pick up his left lead and on his right lead we had the same issue as always. He still did offer to round up several times so he wasn't totally checked out. But because of the weather it was hard to determine if his issues are physical or training. The good news is that he is in fact sound which is what the whole point of his re-check was. So the adequan is most definitely working! Our current plan of action is to see how he progresses when put into a mini traing boot camp to "fix" his canter and re-evaluate if there is no improvement. Simple enough I suppose.

Moving onto Midnite, our initial goal was to continue on with her chiro work but after watching her on the longe and doing some flexions we have determined that her issues are not all fitness related. We weren't quite sure last time due to her lack of work. But after being in some fairly consistent work for the last few weeks we can rule out that it's all fitness related. So Miss Midnite will be started on some adequan too. Luckily with her though we can shop around for a better price since I no longer have my employee discount (I worked at my vet for a temp. position) we can browse. Also luckily she is not bad enough that we have to stop working her in the meantime.

All in all not the best work-ups ever but not the worst by far. I just wish the weather had been more conducive I don't know if things would have gone a different way if everyone wasn't so distracted. Oh well we'll see how things look in another month or so.

Are we finally putting ourselves back together again?

Maybe, maybe not.

My mom ended up with a three day weekend so I was lucky enough not to have to go out to the barn totally alone - score. So on Friday we started off in the ring since Midnite was last worked in the pond field. Poncho was warming up very nicely and trotting out well. Of course, as the pattern seems to go, once we started to canter things unraveled quickly. He was falling on the right lead - OF COURSE. He was rushing and then stopping on the left lead. Overall he was just falling apart in there. We worked out of it somewhat. Even got an almost complete circle on the right lead (he even jumped a pole on the circle). I was proud of him for regaining his composure and trying to work it out. We walked and trotted around for awhile until I got quite determined this would be the ride where he would remember how to go on the bit correctly. It may have taken us awhile and he may have fought quite a bit (violent headtossing if you were wondering) BUT he finally got it. And then it was just like "oh I can do this, why didn't you say so before". Silly Pony.

Saturday Midnite got the day off so Poncho and I headed to gelding field to do some hillwork and work on our canter some more. He started off fighting go on the bit a little but quickly worked out of it. However I do not ask him to stay on the bit the whole time we are out there because he deserves a break for the hillwork and such. Moving on he seems to really love hill work! I'm not sure why but he just lights up and has some extra pep to his step when you do it. We did hill work for about 15 minutes straight then moved out to hack around the rest of the field before starting our trot work. (We still to break up things sporadically add hill work back into the mix though) Since he moved out so well I almost immediately turned around to head to the "big" part of the field to canter down it. Poncho is still grasping the idea that I just want him to canter down the field. He gets a little confused the first time or two like "are you really sure that's what I'm supposed to do?" goof ball. But finally I got someone, my mom, to really see what's going on with his canter. To me it seems he's out somewhere in his neck or poll area. However that's just how I feel when I'm on him - we'll see what the vet says on Wednesday. My mom agreed though that some thing is up. Since the issue appeared out of thin air one day I find it hard to believe he just randomly sprouted a training issue. Anyways once he got the idea of what we were doing he ofcourse got right to work (play). Then we cooled out and called it a day.

Sunday we went back to the gelding field Mom thought it just looked like so much fun that she wanted to come out with Midnite too. So we walked around for who know's how long probably somehwere around 50 minutes before Poncho and I got to "work". Mom hopped off Midnite to take some video to hopefully show the vet, however the quality turned out BAD so that's probably not an option anymore. Oh well. So instead of essentially doing the same run-down of Saturdays ride here is the video:

[vimeo 39982961 w=500 h=281]

Getting out and about!

Since Poncho was struggling with his canter in the ring I decided to take a different approach these last two rides.

On Tuesday I was riding solo and didn't want to be bother with the ring. So we ventured out to the big gelding field (for those who don't know/remember it's 14 acres). We walked up and down the field once each direction. Then we cantered. The first canter I did on his "good" lead, his left, it was a bit bouncy you could say. He was hopping and tossing his head around for the first half of the field. Until he realized we were simply cantering down the field, then he got right down to business and cantered on. Ha. When we turned around he started to get a little fired up his trot just got totally pumped up. Then we broke into the canter. And boy was he moving out nice! He still drifted out majorly, majorly. I didn't push the issue at the time though. Since it was his first time doing that as long as he was content to go I was happy. Then we hacked around the field for awhile. After a lap of the field we went to the back where there's a nice hill and did a bit of hill work. All in all it was a nice change of pace and I think it's a ride type we are going to continue adding to our routine.

Yesterday (Wednesday) by the time we got out to the barn it was HOT. I felt like dying I can't even imagine how the ponies were feeling. So I knew right away it was an easy day. Mom came out with me so we both headed to the pond field. Poncho thought there were some monsters hiding in the woods and on several different occasions felt like he may just explode at any moment. He didn't though. We only walked around for about 20 minutes because it was just sooo hot and Midnite isn't used to working on varied terrain as much as Poncho. But still even with that poor Poncho broke a sweat.



On Tuesday I only longed Midnite I was tired. It was extremely brief because it seems that dragging the ring isn't a priority at the moment and it was like concrete in a couple of spots. So I didn't want to stress her joints out too much. Then on Wednesday in the pond field she was a super star. She seemed to handle the terrain exceptionally well.

Bit by bit.

We're getting there. Slowly but surely.

In the last three rides (Friday, Saturday, and today) there has been immense improvement. Friday we started out a bit rushy and very stiff at the canter. Although he still listened to what I asked, he wasn't quite "there".

Saturday started off much more consistent. We even ended up going out to the gelding field for a hack to cool-out. While we were in the ring we worked on our figures and consistency in the gate. I think things are starting to stick. YAY.

Today he seemed to almost pull it all together. He was much more consistent in his trot work. We did lots and lots of cantering it's still got ways to go. On our right lead we still epically fail. I want to take him to the gelding field and just canter up and down it - so that he can just canter and not worry about turns. The adequan is for surely making a difference i've noticed that he's trying to come on to the bit more often now. Today we got some glimmers of it in the trot. And then when we went out to the gelding field with mom and Midnite he was full on going on the bit 85% of the time. So he's definitely pushing much more from behind now.

Midnite is now officially trotting undersaddle, about 5 minutes total. Luckily she seems to be having no problem with it whatsoever!