Fri 1st
Bella had her physio therapist Emily up today to give her a full body work. She found quite a lot of tightness in her right side sacral-iliac (hip) and she was quite sore there. She gave her some work on both hips, back, back legs, neck and head. Now she will have a couple of days off as she will be sore and then I can slowly and gently start her fitness work again. This will involve in-hand walk work for first week with some gentle agility involving backup and sidepass. 2nd week will be more walk work building up to walk/passenger lesson ridden but mostly I just have to take her at her own speed and she’ll let me know when she’s ready to be ridden more and go into trot and finally back into canter 😉
Mon 4th
So, it’s been 2 days since Bella had her therapy and now it’s time to start to have some interaction. Today we did some brain work…not a lot of action BUT these games really work on helping to re-connect after a break from riding. I gently ask a question and then Bella tries something and asks me whether that’s good. I always say ‘good girl’ but if I wanted something else I’d add ‘can you try something else?’. Today the questions were few as she ‘got’ what I was asking straight away, with all of them 😉
2 front feet in hula hoop / 2 back feet in hula hoop / 2 front feet over pole / right front over pole / left front over pole / back right over pole / back left over pole / right front and right back sidle over pole 😉 😉
She also did the calmest, slowest, nice walk circle left and then right and we walked up a stretch of the field just mirroring each other…..forward/halt/left/right/backup 🙂 F.A.B 😉
Tues 5th
2nd day of getting back to ‘work’ for Bella. Another round of S2M in walk doing nice rounded turns but also we did some large circles in walk plus some of the stuff we did yesterday with a twist SO circle in walk halting at the pole or hulahoop. Circle with a stop by the pole and sidepass together over it etc. These sorts of things keep Bella’s brain exercised and we get so connected doing them 😉
Weds 6th
Trimmed all 4 of Bella’s hooves today and she was much easier to do her back hooves today. Last time she was a bit sore and I had to put her back legs down regularly and swap from one to the other to give her a break. Today she could hold her legs up for longer and not need so many breaks so she’s definitely feeling better in her hip area 😉
Thurs 7th
Very hot today but went down to see Bella, groomed her, fly sprayed her and then when a nice breeze came up and the sun went in for a spell I rode her bareback in a lovely nice walk. Her gait was big, rhythmic and very balanced, felt lovely 😉 Only did a bit but the start of more ridden work to rebuild our flexibility and fitness 😉
Tues 12th
Today I got up early to feed the horses and poo pick the field. There was a lovely breeze in the air and there were no flies SO I also managed a nice, short-ish ride on Bella before the clegs started biting again.
Just a lovely big walk and a really lovely soft trot in a smallish arena area today. Nothing big as we need to just start fittening up again when we can. If the weather is cool with no flies then we can do it otherwise we’ll just have to wait 😉
Weds 13th
Another breezy, coolish day SO I ride Bella with Mark and Stormy too. Stormy just wanted to put his head down in the long grass but we all got a nice bit of riding in before Mark took Stormy back to the track. Bella wanted to be with Stormy so I did a wee bit of riding on the track in front of the arena. I was just asking for basic soft turns but she was quite braced especially going to the right so I just kept going in big fig 8’s trying to find relaxation, softness and flexibility and stopped when she got a good right turn. I played about with either putting weight onto my outside stirrup or my inside one to help get out of her way and for her to ‘find’ her curve both ways 😉
Thurs 14th
A bright but cloudy day here with a nice breeze (most of the time). Mark and I take Bella and Stormy out for a short hack to the house and back. It’s the first time they’ve been out on this track since the land owner did some repair work making it a bit flatter but it also brought up a lot of stones. They both did very well but they definitely missed the green verge that got trashed in the repair work. Unfortunately when the sun came out and the breeze dropped we were inundated with flies and a lot of clegs (horseflies0, Stormy seems to handle them okay but poor Bella was driven a wee bit crazy and was jogging along the track, thrashing her head about and swishing her tail to get them off. I did my best to swat them off her and keep riding. We got some nice trot and a wee bit of canter so I’m not so worried about fittening her up, she moves fine when she wants to 🙂 lol.
Lovely to hack out again on beautiful Bella…will hopefully invest in a zebra coloured riding fly rug and mask to make her, and my riding life, nicer 🙂
Fri 22nd
We’ve been having quite a lot of very very VERY HOT days here. The flies are pretty bad too, not just black flies but horseflies (clegs) which bite the horses and me!! So I’ve been just hanging out with them when I can, grooming and putting tons of fly spray on them and not much else. Today though we have slightly cooler weather with a nice breeze and although Ms Bella still doesn’t want to come out of the shelter (she does get bitten by clegs much more than Stormy) I decide to take Mr Stormy out into the long grass field for a wee ride.
Now we didn’t do much BUT we played the ‘ridden grazing game’ where we ride to a point, back up 4-6 steps, wait 4-6 seconds then he gets to graze a couple of mouthfuls of grass and then onto the next point and this works exceedingly well. Soon enough knowing the game we can ride on a loose rein. He also gives me a small bit of canter and then we go back onto the track for a double strength mint as a thank you 😉 He’s such a sweet horse, love him to bits <3
Morning snooze with the weather being cooler 😉
Start riding Stormy
Bella hiding out in the shelter
Storm and I having a nice wee ride
Grazing game working well with P2P’s
Nice canter up the hillock
Another nice canter up the hillock…he’s a wee prancing pony 😉
Grazing game working well, no grabbing for grass as he knows I’ll allow him on my cue
Treat instead of grazing for some variety
Nice loose rein trot
Love our big boy, he is so kind, generous and sweet natured <3
Sun 24th
A lovely play with Bella, she offered a lot of interesting stuff, checking in with me often to where we were having some nice conversations about obstacles 😉
Then Stormy came over for a bit of a 2 horse play session….
….and then I had a lovely wee bareback ride on Bella….
Fri 29th
A nice ride but Bella was a bit ‘fresh’
Need to rethink riding as sporadic riding is not good for consistency
Sat 30th
New regime from today….early morning feed time I get to play with Bella, see how she’s feeling. A few bits of yeehaa today BUT after her play we had a lovely ride in my ‘arena’ area 🙂
Sat 31st
Another early morning play and ride. This routine seems to be working nicely, cool weather, no flies and we get to play first and then ride some nice arena patterns. We only do about 20 mins but it’s going really well 🙂
- Shelley – HorseSavvy