15th - 27th November. Devils claw

Things arnt too bad at the moment. Adam has a new farrier who he seemed to like...

He's started his ground work, so far we have lunged twice and long reined once. I started off with the patient, nicey nicey approach, then he jumped about and looked for every excuse in the book to play about...little monkey. So I had to change my approach and worked him very hard indeed! Changing the stride from collected to pushing him on a little...he's really good at listening to my voice, seazes to amaze me sometimes, wish he did that when I was on top!

His devil's claw seems to be doing to trick too. He's no longer bandaged every night and he seems so much more comfortable in canter whilst in the pessoa. He honestly struggled with it before hand...
So I don't feel like I'm throwing my money down the drain too much! For those interested, I've been using James Hart equine solutions. It's not the watered down rubbish, which means I only feed 20ml a day.

Looking into something else at the moment - st John's wort supplement. Apparently good for horses with no get up and go or enthusiasm for work (adam)...always been like it, just sometimes would be nice to not have to ride a donkey (who will find most excuses to play around, even though he doesnt have many excuses anymore).
It's well know for it's healing properties after stressful situations or trauma too, so will keep you posted on that!

Over and out :) 

 

 

7th October - 15th November. Taken a step back, time for a holiday.

A very over due post.

We have been having some tricky times recently. Adam seems to have gone into slug mode and just doesn't fancy doing anything. It seems that his attitude towards most ridden work has decreased and i seem to be getting more and more disheartened.

So we have decided to take a brake from each other and have some time off. He is currently having two weeks off (very grumpy) and i'm letting him be a horse.

Our schooling hasn't been anything as dangerous as it used to be, but he wont move away from my leg and into the bridle. Respect for my leg has dissapeared and its becoming very fustrating.
He has also decided that spinning infront of cars and then wizzing past them at 100mph is also very fun. I can assure its not. This is in company too!

I've seen my confidence slowly decrease in the past month or so, so something needs to be done!

My plan of action is now:

Allow him to have 2 weeks off to relax.
Start my pessoa and long reining work again.
Have Emily Farleigh down to help me get him back into ridden work for a weekend
Give him another spell of time off so he learns to relax and enjoy his work.

I need to remember that he is now a leisure horse, and no longer needs to be ridden 5-6 days a week. I've always been so strict with myself on how i monitor his exercise and if I didn't exercise him, I'd feel guilty. He is now 13 and a dope on a rope, so i don't think its necessary to make him stale to his work.

So we are both learning to chill.

School downtime :) Enjoying some rare sunshine!