A Bunch of Groundwork

 Thunder still has two more weeks of walk work only before we can get back to real work after all his ailments. His sweet itch is a lot better, but unfortunately right now only steroids are really getting it under control and stopping him from rubbing himself raw. At least it's nearly the end of the season now, and the itchiness is definitely linked to insects, so we'll only have to give him a couple more shots before the bugs die. I'll have to save up this winter and get him every fly boot, fly mask and fly sheet under the sun to avoid having the same issue next year - but I think it's the bot flies, hateful things.

Anyway, I digress. Since we can only do walk work, and one of us is kind of a butthead on hacks, we've been getting inventive with what we can do in the arena to spend some time together and maintain whatever strength we can.

Backtracking to my last lesson two weeks ago, I'd been struggling with installing the lateral work on my young Friesians. They're smart, and they were getting the hang of the sideways thing, but not the sideways-and-forwards thing. So Coach J taught me how to do more lateral work in-hand. I've always done turns on the forehand/yielding the quarters, but by the end of three lessons with the babies, J had me doing shoulder-in and leg-yield all over the place. If they could only step away from the whip pressure in a turn on the forehand, they didn't yet understand what it really meant.

"Once your horse will do it immediately, no matter where you ask him, that's when it's established." - the oracle himself

life is too short for matching socks

Also, Coach J said that if I get Thunder's in-hand work really good, he'll teach us both to piaffe in hand. Who doesn't need a piaffing Thunder in their life? We spent this week working on some shoulder-in, leg-yield and turn on the forehand in hand, as well as rein back for his sticky stifle, and he's obviously been amazing. He kicked at the whip once or twice, his very annoying go-to resistance, but that diminished a lot as we went on. I think we might finally be achieving his understanding of the whip as an aid instead of a punishment (and the misunderstanding was my fault in the first place anyway).

Thunder has been enjoying himself, especially because there are so many treats involved. I've interspersed a bit of playing around at liberty into his sessions as well. The first attempt backfired when he climbed under the arena gate to get some nice green grass and I had to do the walk of shame to fetch him in front of half the riding school, but after that he decided that he'd humor me and stayed right by my side.

so blurry, but I love his little face here

Of course, groundwork is also a huge part of my daily routine since I back all the baby Friesians (they are THE EASIEST horses to back! So trusting). We also have a baby in for backing here at the yard, a very special one. MS Lady Erin was bred here years ago and sold as a weanling, and when her owner was no longer able to keep her, my bestest friend (and, hilariously, Lady Erin's namesake) stepped in and bought her. I'm the lucky person who gets to put her under saddle now.

She is only four and still has some of the baby uglies going on, but I'm really happy and impressed with how she's developing. She also has a really sweet and chill personality especially for a half WB, half TB chestnut mare.

screenshots for days

I also schooled Lancey on Wednesday and he was quite brain-tired by the end, so I planned to take him out into the fields yesterday. When a bit of spare time rolled around, though, there were a million kids tacking up and I didn't trust them not to get themselves squashed without supervision, so I lunged the little guy instead just for some exercise.

I really should lunge my own guys more regularly. My young Friesians lunge at least as often as they're ridden to build up strength and fitness; in fact, their ridden work is almost entirely brain-work instead of body-work, so that I'm not overloading brain and body in a single session. But with my two boys, who are a bit further along in their education, I'm honestly kind of lazy about lungeing them. I don't get to work them as often as I would like and when I do, I really just want to enjoy some riding.

I think the solution is to teach my lovely groom to lunge with the neck stretcher, then even when my schedule doesn't go according to plan, he can still give them some exercise.

Anyway, Lancey looked lovely and strong, and he was accepting the contact so beautifully! Plus when one of the kid ponies broke loose and started running around, he stood angelically and watched - being held by a sibling who had probably never handled a horse before - while I caught the pony.

In other news, old Skye is looking AMAZING right now. We stayed on top of controlling her itchiness this summer, so her tail - which she rubbed out almost completely a couple of years ago - is growing back pretty well. She's also fairly fat now, about 7.5/10, but she needs all the weight she can get going into the winter. She and Magic are in my last grazing field, and there's still some grass there, but I think it's starting to get too hard and dry for her old teeth. It's a tell-tale sign when she starts standing next to Magic while he grazes at times; her teeth don't hurt, but I think it just gets exhausting to be trying to grind the harder grass down with those stubby little nubs.

Magic is a fat pig on grazing alone, of course

I bought her a bag of Speedi-Beet in the hopes that it'd be soft enough for her to chew. At first she WOULD NOT touch it at all, but we mixed it with some muesli for a few days and now she's eating it nicely for lunch. I've also added some extra lucerne chaff to her senior feed for breakfast and supper. Ultimately I think we're going to have no choice but to feed her soupy chaff and Speedi-Beet as the majority of her roughage intake if we're going to hold her weight this winter.

the rest of the old age home - Toy Town (21) goes for weekly hacks to keep his old joints going, but Conspicuous (25) and Legacy (21) are fully retired

Today's Scripture reading took me to 2 Samuel 21, where there's a terrible famine throughout Israel. The Psalm that went along with it was Psalm 42, which was written by the Levite musicians instead of King David. The first few verses ring very familiar, but reading it chronologically gave me such new eyes to the context in which it was written. When these psalmists wrote "My soul thirsts for You", they were literally starving. "My tears have been my food" isn't just poetic, it's literal. Yet even in times of famine, these people were hungering after God more than anything.

bonus pic: my favourite weirdo and his crazy little Titan 💜