Let’s take a break from all the fake horses for a bit and get back to the real star of the show, Simon! His royal highness seems to be doing well. Due to some interesting weather, I only got to ride twice this week but lunged him one additional day. He treated to me to some shenanigans and let me know that the impending thunder storm was a big deal.

Don’t be jealous. He trots for this for like 3 strides before turning back into a mix of a western pleasure horse and a donkey.

When he moves out on the lunge line or round pen he looks really good to me. I’m no vet, but I don’t see any favoring of his right hind like there was before.

Under saddle it’s a different story. He doesn’t feel lame, but he feels weak and wobbly. I do get glimpses of my nice strong horse from before, so I’m not panicking and just taking it slow. We do about 30 minutes of tack walking, and each time I sprinkle more trot in. Tuesday we did some straight lines of trotting. Friday we did 4 laps around the big arena with breaks in between. One lap of trotting has him breathing a little hard, not bad but I’m no tiny kid rider so we will build up our endurance slowly.

Each time I get on I treat him more like a horse in work and less like a trail horse. Day one was totally on the buckle, but by Friday I was picking up some contact and doing a little lateral work. His stifles are soooooo weak, so I’m mixing in lots of walking over poles and building up more lateral work and backing.

All in all, I’m feeling really good about things. His schedule is a bit erratic right now with my current barn trying to accommodate individual turnout for him with the farm hand being on vacation. Even with a huge change in his daily turnout schedule he’s been calm and quiet under saddle. He’s also slowly gaining weight back now that he’s on full grain again, so I think we’re doing quite alright building back up!

You may also like:

Goal Building Intensified Simon’s Recovery Progress Honeymoon Stage Simon is sound! A Good Week