Two-Steppin'

One step forward; two steps back or two steps forward; one step back? Hell I don’t know, we just backed up. I forgot my boots last night so couldn’t have ridden her if I’d wanted to, but seeing her demeanor, I didn’t want to. We were back to wild eyed and reactive.

I’m a little frustrated both with her and with not being able to work her consistently, for a myriad of very good reasons, but nonetheless we’re not consistent. To be fair, I did add a couple of new elements last night. First, I changed her noseband and added a flash on the advice of both instructors. She tends to suck the bit and then spit it out and she needs to learn to carry it consistently and NOT learn to get her tongue over it. I put the flash (a piece of leather that encircles her muzzle below the bit to keep her mouth closed) on fairly loosely but she was definitely testing it and reacting to it. My old mare, Lucy, reared up the first time she felt the flash, so by comparison Megan’s reaction was tame; she was just fussier than normal. Second, I tried out a new pair of sliding side reins. The reins attach to the girth between her front legs, go thru the rings of the bit and back to the girth on the side. They are supposed to encourage her to work more over her back and through.

Hated the new side reins. I did anyway; I’m not sure she was impressed either. I took them off halfway through the lunge session and tightened the flash up a bit more to stop her from cranking her jaws open to test the limits.

All and all the word for the evening was: FUSSY. She careened around on the lunge line and over-reacted to every attempt to correct her and get a more deliberate pace. I finally found a good note to stop on and she was blowing and huffing like she’d done a marathon. That makes me wonder if she’s still overall a little body sore and that’s the root cause of her fussiness. I decided to cancel our Saturday adventure and go on a shorter road trip with no riding and just see if we can re-engage her softness.

We’ll see what we have tonight…