Well, at least I tried ...
George bucked like stink, threw me into the wall of the barn and now I've broken my other arm.
Nah, not really :-)
He was ever so funny. He had gone right back to puffing his belly out so that I couldn't get the girth done up, and treading on my toes to stop me pulling it tight. He hasn't done that for a couple of months. We had a negotiation - he went to tread on my toe, I kicked his leg, he agreed that treading on my toe was a bad idea, problem solved :-)
Then we took him into the barn and he stood there shaking gently, as if something terrifying might be about to happen. He was probably picking up my nerves because I was really quite tense about it. I don't know if I was afraid of what might happen, or afraid that I was about to find out that I couldn't ride yet, or a bit of each.
But George was, as usual, a little lamb. Getting on was no problem at all and neither was riding. The splint/boot was perfect. It's now about six hours later and I have no side effects at all except two little ones - my left shoulder, the one I broke in March, has been gently aching for several days. Not any more! And since I dislocated it, my elbow has been clicking slightly. Again, not any more. I think it has actually done the whole arm no end of good to have had some proper exercise without too much load.
Now for George. Well he pretty much started where he left off nearly three weeks ago. He was pretty tense to begin with but he settled after a while. He went to pieces on a change of rein, but again got it back in time for me to have got some quite decent work on each rein, in walk, in the space of the 30 minutes that SH allowed me to be on board. And I think a first (not quite sure if he's done it before - I don't remember him doing it) - he stretched right forward and down from time to time and walked long and low.
Tomorrow I'm going to do half an hour on George and half on Jazz and see how we go then. It's great to have life back to normal.
C
posted by cptrayes @ 4:46 PM
6 comments
6 Comments:
you mean SH will let you do a full hour's riding? he shouldn't
i've just posted you a postcard, hopefully you get it before we actually get home!
Phew!
Don't see why not Claire. If half an hour did nothing at all, would an hour of the same be any different? It's not as if I "managed" half an hour, I had to make myself stop at half an hour. There was no sign at any time that it was any problem at all to ride, and there still isn't, thankfully :-)
Did I manage to catch you out Mandeigh? I tried hard :-)
C
Nothing like a first ride to make you feel that you are back on track! You would know if it wasn't the right thing to do by now. You just have to be extra careful and only ask for things that each individual horse will find easy. No fights yet!
ML
Good news, indeed. Your first sentence gave me an instant's pause and then I said, "George???? Surely not...."
A bit of reading I've done recently says ideally the horse needs two days off for the muscles to "learn" the new stuff and recover for more work. That is one of the principles of mixing up the kind of work you do each day. I wonder if the longer layoff was acutally good for George's muscle memory. I can't remember his walking off with his head stretching down either.
I am hopeful that once he realizes first that it's OK to drop his head, and then that it feels good, he will be transformed.
No ill effects is good, especially if you wake up tomorrow and still feel OK.
Yup, I woke up feeling just fine. No aches, no stiffness, no problem!
ML, it was good to be on board, for sure.
C
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