I almost cancelled my lesson today because I've had a cold for a couple days and have felt yucky, but Emma is on vacation next week and I didn't want to go too long without a lesson. Plus, nothing clears out the sinuses like a cold indoor arena or an energetic session of stall mucking :). But am missing this weekend's barn party in favor of hanging out at home and drinking tea in my pj's in hopes of nipping this cold once and for all.
I got to the barn at noon for my 12:30 lesson, which was definitely pushing it; the traffic didn't cooperate coming out of Burlington. Luckily the lesson before mine was running long, so I had about 10 minutes to warm Dude up once I got out to the arena at 12:25. It worked out well.
After warming him up at the walk, we worked on my posting trot. We did it in sections around the perimeter of the arena using the dressage markers as guides. Basically I was trotting the segment in a "J" shape each time, because I always caught a straightaway and part of a curve. By the time we started the second round, Dude had caught on so we shifted the pattern a little bit. There were several good walk-trot-walk transitions, and a couple not-so-good ones. It's always a fight to keep him on the wall, so a couple of my transitions weren't too pretty as I tried to wrestle him back on the wall.
Then we went to jogging a serpentine, which was fun. And again, some lovely curves and some downright ugly curves! But all in all, enough nice ones that it felt good. We did a full pattern twice at the jog. I find I have to really concentrate on "feeling" his movement, because his jog is so slow that he can break without me feeling it coming. Emma pointed out that he tends to break in certain spots (nearing the door, for one!), and that I should keep alert for those spots and give him a bit of encouragement on the approach.
By the time we got done it was about 1:15, so I decided to just keep him in since they usually come in around 2/2:30. When I looked out to check on Bestie, Dude's pasture mates were chewing on each other--another reason not to put him back out! I brushed him really well and then got Bestie and groomed her. Was going to lunge her but my head started clogging up again.
Talked to Emma a little bit about his weight. We upped his grain about six weeks ago, but he is still looking ribby. Sometimes in the last couple of weeks I've felt like he's started to put on weight, but today I didn't feel that way at all. We decided to give him another couple weeks. I can't figure it out. It started about the time we got snow and they went off grass. With his grain increase, he's getting about double the senior feed he was getting.
When he's in his stall I think he gets more hay than he got at the previous barn. The only wild card is when he's outside--at this barn they feed hay outside rather than in the stall in the morning, so I'm not sure how much he eats out there (whereas at the previous barn he was definitely eating two flakes in the morning). Today when I got him for his lesson, there were still two untouched flakes laying in the snow in his pasture. He's not low man on the pole, but I still wonder how much he's eating. With his grain in the evening he has about a cup of Glanzen GL, one third cup of rice bran, and one little scoop (maintenance dose) of Vitamin E powder. He eats it all right up--never any grain left in Dude's feeder!
Following our usual schedule, I had his teeth checked in the fall, but it's definitely time to have them looked at again in the next few weeks.
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