Well Black and I have reached an exciting milestone in his rehab: our first lesson! I've been playing with the idea of taking a lesson for the past month or so because I know both Black and I have gotten into some terrible habits and I'm sure they're not helping his rehab. So we went to An Otherwise Perfect Farm and had a lesson with Courtney Sendak last Saturday! I knew Courtney had rehabbed her super pony from a suspensory so I felt confident that she would be able to help me navigate this next scary step of working Black SLOWLY back into full work. I have not gotten the go ahead from my vet yet as we have been playing phone tag and we seem to have opposite schedules- so frustrating! But after Black got some serious kinks worked out from the chiropractor he has been a different, happy horse and I know he's telling me he's ready for more. I've added more 20 meter circles and some smaller (15m) circles as well as serpentine's, leg yields, shoulder in's and spiraling in and out at the trot and canter. But I haven't had anyone watch me ride Black in almost a year. And boy did we need the help!
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| We were VERY excited :) |
Courtney was really great on picking up immediately that Black tends to take advantage of my kindness and talks me into letting him get out of working! Apparently I've been riding with my hands really wide and overflexing him so he just pops his shoulder instead of using his hind end. I had no idea I was doing that!! She started by having me leg yield all the way across the arena to get his hind end engaged. It took a lot of work on my part and a lot of grunting on Black's part but it helped a lot to get his hind end awake. We also put Black perpendicular to the track and leg yielded him down the long side. That was really tough but really helped his hind end come through. I would have never had the guts to do that without Courtney's guidance. Courtney really helped me to understand how much to push Black and that he's sound enough and mentally ready for it. I'm, on the other hand, struggling with that. I want to wait until February or March to jump him since I'm in no rush but I think I'll need that much time to get myself mentally ready to jump him without being afraid of breaking him. At this point, I really have no idea how much he can handle and I'm terrified of finding out the hard way. I've been so careful and done everything I can for Black's rehab that it makes this next part really scary. His rehab has been carefully planned out by the vets up until this point. Now I'm told to take things slow but keep adding work. That's really hard to know were the line is! Well I'm now up to 3, 10 minute trot sets and on a different day 3, 5-6 minute canters. He's working for at least an hour every time he's ridden and between 4-6 days a week. That's pretty dang close to "full work"! But what does that even mean?!
We really pushed Black (and me!) at our lesson and he felt great the end. He was more through his back than he has been in a long time and he was SO happy to be working harder! The best part was his leg was tight afterwards and tight the next morning! WAHOO! While we have a lot of homework to do before our next lesson, more than anything it made me more comfortable with pushing Black during my rides since that's the only way we're going to get back to where we were and even better! Thank you to Courtney for your help! We will be at our one year "anniversary" of Black's injury in about 2 weeks! This year had really flown by...
