Arena Time

Today I had to teach a lesson so I decided both horses could use a good arena schooling session. I turned Jetta and Keno loose to run first, and did they ever! Jetta ran and ran and ran! Keno was valiant in his efforts to keep up. It seemed quite humid this morning, so they were sweaty within a short time. I rode Keno first. The other week I took him to an equine massage therapist to see if his stiffness/hock soreness could be addressed. I have taken him to the chiropractor and the vet already. He had his hocks injected with negligible results. This has been ongoing for nine months; he has been unable to even trot over ground poles without stumbling. Since I have been wanting to take a course and get certified as a message therapist, I decided to try it out and see if it could help my boy, and let me watch a therapist in action at the same time. He had three visits and holy cow! Keno is MUCH improved. Flexible, forward, light, bendy. We trotted over poles for the first time this year and he was fine! Yay! I have my guy back!

Keno then gave a new beginner rider a lesson--horsemanship/ground skills as well as walk/trot under saddle.   Big improvement all the way around. I was already a believer in massage therapy, but this dramatic improvement was unexpected!

Jetta waited at the trailer through all of this with no fussing. I then rode her for about 30 minutes. She started out being a little snotty actually. By this I mean making faces and pinning her ears when I asked her to bend and move off my leg. She got over it quickly though. I think this is defensive behavior she came with. I never see it on the trail, only in the arena. We went on to work on bending, turning, softening, small steps toward self-carriage, and transitions. I lost the softness at the trot, though, so we went back to working at the walk. Later things improved so we worked at the trot again. Jetta trotted through the ground poles perfectly, too. She's a fun girl. I wish I knew what they did to her in her initial training to make her so defensive, though. She'll outgrow it, I'm sure, but she's obviously afraid someone or something is going to hurt her. I asked her to back up a few times, met some resistance, but kept asking until she gave me a few good steps. Then I hopped off and told her what a good girl she is.