Lesson #35: Switch Up

I took Friday of as a personal day to run a bunch of errands; and let me tell you: I am amazing. I literally packed more to do in a single day than I could potentially be productive at work with. ADW and I started the day even earlier than usual and dropped Bucky off for his snip snip procedure. The rest of the day was spent running from place to place to check out venues for the pending nuptials. Trust me, venue hunting is not fun.

Anyways, this meant we had flexibility throughout the day, leading up to our lesson in the evening. Bucky was picked up in the mid afternoon and we stayed with him until he settled in at home and seemed okay. Then, we headed out at the time I would, if I was going from my place and the traffic was really really good.

We arrived and I started the lesson riding Indy but ended up with Nifty by the end of the evening. Good ol' Aspen was having some fits of his summer asthma so had the weekend off--the horse with hay fever! hahaha. We were working on the usual transitions and some jumping of the Cavaletti. While Indy was his usual mischievous self, Nifty was being really unruly. He refused to move forward and even almost backed into Indy at one point! We weren't sure what was going on at first and Sheri was saying that it might be some of his tack because even though Nifty is known to have a bit of an attitude, he's never unruly without reason.

ADW and I switched it up and I took Nifty and things got a teeny bit better and he wasn't refusing to move forward anymore. But, he wasn't really listening to my aids and was shaking his head and chomping on the bit a lot. Sheri decided to remove the martingale and the half pad to see if that got a bit better--a little bit. But, he was still getting into canter and speeding around without me asking him to.

One of the parents mentioned that he was chomping at the bit more than usual and so Sheri checked his mouth to see if there was something bothering him in there. It appears that there might have been some sharpness in his mouth and because of the way horses' teeth wear, they can leave hooks or sharp edges that rub into their mouths. Unfortunately for me, Nifty's super sensitive to a lot and doesn't even like being brushed so, it isn't surprising that if it is his teeth that's bothering him, he's going to be cranky about it.

I tried a few times to get into a good trot around the outside ring but it seems like he just would break out into a canter and deek about. With my lack of experience with Nifty and riding in general, I found it very difficult to stay seated properly and the constant pulling didn't help. In addition, Nifty has a super rocky canter which I have yet to master to ride without feeling like I'm launching out of the saddle. Since he wasn't being an unruly douche for the fun of it, I figured it'd be best to take it easy. We just walked a few times around the ring and called it a night.

Overall, the lesson was very frustrating for me (and I'm sure Nifty was not happier) and one of the more disappointing ones. I was frustrated with not being able to canter around and do the jumps because on Aspen, everything just comes together. However, in order to master the ability to ride any mount, I"ll need to do just that; and get on any horse and ride through whatever it is that isn't working.