Lesson 11 - a short post

The past few weeks have been weird. Thanks to pulling a muscle in my back, and it not being better after 2 weeks, I was not able to ride. Sometimes I couldn't even walk! During this, I spent a lot of time and money trying to see if we could help identify the source of Mia's personality change. So far, I have cut back her way grain, removed the weight supplement (which was no longer needed anyway thanks to grass), removed the protein supplement, made horse crack cookies, tested her for lyme (which came back completely negative, something the vet said is uncommon around here), had her teeth done, dewormed her, got a massage therapist out, started her on Mare Magic, and had the vet out for a full eval with lameness.

The dental visit was interesting, as it was with power tools. 1cc of Dorm was not enough for Mia, I had to hold her head down so the dentist could work and even with that Mia lifted me off of the ground different times. Next time we are going to mix in something else! Her mouth was completely unremarkable, just some sharper points and basic maintenance. The vet visit was completely uninteresting, Mia isn't back or body sore. She is in excellent condition. The vet says sometimes she recommends hind shoes but Mia is barefoot her whole life and doesn't want me to change that. The only thing of note was Mia's left hock is a little stiff so we added in a loading dose of Legend to try to loosen her up a little.

Mia does not like the dentist, and needs a LOT of sedation

Since I couldn't ride, I offered let A ride Mia and she was more than happy to hop aboard and give her opinion on how Mia is doing.The part that made me laugh was A's agreement that while in the past she has said Mia could never be bad, she agrees that Mia can be difficult. Ha! Mia is a redhead Appy mare, of course she can be difficult sometimes. She also was difficult to work with at the start of the ride, though she came around towards the middle of the ride.

A riding

The takeaways was that I am doing a pretty good job of riding Mia, as A couldn't tell just how little Mia was respecting my right leg (bad leg). She also couldn't tell just how much Mia pulls on the left rein, so I do a good job of making it look effortless. A spent most of the time getting Mia flexed, counter flexed, and over flexed to get her hind end working. She confirmed that Mia does take a good while to get warmed up, and that her first right lead canter is pretty bad although it does get better.

Mia is difficult to stay consistent in the bridle, even with A, so that is homework with some new tricks. I am also now supposed to start wearing spurs again to really get Mia to respect my leg. She said Mia's canter may not get much better than where we have made it due to Mia's confirmation but we can give Mia all of the tools we can so she stops fighting herself.

A riding, engaging those hocks

It took another 9 days after the lesson for my back to release and for me to start riding again. Unfortunately I had this post all typed up and Blogger ate it which set me back and I didn't recreate it until I had my lesson today. So....lesson 12 is coming right up!