Building Back Up

Building Back Up

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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!

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16 thoughts on “Building Back Up

  1. He definitely looks like he’s starting to build his weight and strength back up. It definitely takes time but it will all work out!

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