So... since Dan was still shoeless... and I had the day off, I opted to ride Fun buns too! I rode Lyric first and as we were walking back to the barn, we had circled around the corner of the pasture and were back on the front side of the tree island... when Funny came cantering up around the backside of the island. Hee hee.. it was like we were playing ring around the rosie for a minute! Of course then Funny came cantering around and trotted up to us. I had turned Lyric to see her, so.. it was all good. No spooks or bolts! Yay!
Anyways... clearly Funny wanted to play, so.. she was up next. I tacked her up at the trailer and we headed to the arena. Despite the other horses staying in the stalls, she was good and walked up there with no incidents. I lunged her first because.. it was a hair cooler today and there was some storm clouds brewing. And, honestly, I think it's been at least two weeks since I've ridden her! So yeah... seemed like a wise choice. She was actually pretty good though.
We lunged both ways and she cantered and cavorted a few times and shook her head at me, but they were mild shenanigans. She actually seemed a hair lazy. So we didn't lunge for long. I got on and she immediately walked off so I made her halt. Then we walked. She was being really good. We walked a good bit and just had a nice forward walk and worked a little bit on our relationship to contact.. ie, if I close my fingers, you soften. It wasn't perfect, but we made some progress. And she definitely wasn't inverted or hollow for the majority of it. So then we did our turns. We even went in and around the ground poles I had set out, so some pretty tight figure 8's. She was super. So then we trotted. We had a few balky moments especially turning left at the rail. But we managed through pretty uneventfully. Then we did some figure 8s, but like... across the arena figure 8's. In other words... I just changed direction while trotting instead of walking in between. And then at some point in our ride she felt lame. Oh, I think it was right after she tried to scoot and buck. I brought her back to the walk after we settled from the shenanigans and let her rest. And then I picked up the trot again to feel her out. It took me a few circles to figure out if she was still lame or not and which direction... I want to say it was tracking left. (of course now I can't remember). But then it went away, so... I'm not sure what happened. Fatigue? Tight muscle? She tweaked herself when she was naughty? or nothing at all? I did two more laps at the trot and she was sound and then we finished on a good note and called it.
I had her let me open the gate and shut it without getting off and then we walked back to the barn. I did make her turn and go up the tiny little hill and she had a moment of resistance trying to get to the barn so we had to do it twice. But we did. I laughed and reminded her that I was likely as stubborn as her!
She was soooo good though! She got a rinse and then got turned back out. Good pony!
