"Last published on May 19." Yeesh, I always feel like a loser when I see a spread like that between posts :). What's transpired since May 19? Both daughters arrived home from college, and that means that Dude is very pleased to have his girl back. The day before she arrived home, I told him, "Dude, you are gonna be one happy guy tomorrow." And he was. It's been nice having her company at the barn, although we've only managed to do one ride together. Which brings me to this post's title...
I'm trying to spend more time on Bestie now that Katie's home to ride Dude. So one beautiful Friday night I got on her to ride out to the outdoor ring. I rode her around in the indoor for 10 minutes or so, and she was positively sluggish. She'd been outside all day in the sun. We walked around and warmed up, did a couple lovely little jogs around the indoor and then headed out. About half way to the outdoor ring, we met up with barn manager Emma, who was walking back to the barn, and I pulled Bestie up to chat with Emma about something. Bestie was fine for a minute, then got really irritated and starting bouncing about, clearly ready to get going. We continued on down the path. Once we got to the outdoor, we rode around at a trot and the walk, circling around the jumps and just working on keeping her slow and bending. She just kept getting more and more irritated, progressively faster and clearly not listening to me.
This situation just wasn't going anywhere positive, so I jumped off her so that I could pick her poop out of the ring. She calmed down as we walked back and forth, back and forth, with a couple forkfuls of manure to the wheelbarrow. Then I brought her back to the step stool to get back on her to ride her back to the barn. She would not hold still for me to get on, just kept circling around. We were the only ones out there, so we weren't in anyone's way. I just kept walking her back to the step stool and positioning her, then she'd move off before I even got to the top of the stool.
Finally I was able to get on her, and then she headed like a bullet to the open gate. There's a dressage ring set up within the ring, and I was afraid she was either going to run right through the poles, or jump them. I got her pulled up and she stepped over the poles, then she shot through the gate and started bouncing around on the path, sidestepping one way, then the other and tossing her head around. She was pretty worked up. I was afraid she was going to rear. I was trying to stay really calm and not pull on her mouth too much, because she hates that, but I wanted to keep enough pressure on to keep her from running off. Finally there was a pause in the action and I jumped off. Fun.
I walked her back to the barn. By the time we got about half way back she had settled down. I don't know what set off the temper tantrum, it really came out of the blue. We've ridden out there before all by ourselves and she's been fine. And I've been either riding or lunging her regularly.
I got back on her the next day but only rode in the indoor, and she was good. The following day I rode out to the outdoor, and she tried to spin around and go back to the barn a couple times, but I was able to get her back on the path without much of a fight. I'm having a lesson on her Wednesday, which will be good. You can't fight with her and win, so I'm hoping Emma will come up with some good tools to focus and calm Bestie when she has a "moment." I'm also hoping this is a temperamental phase that will pass as suddenly as it arrived.
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