What's Up With Courage

Lately, this blog has been mostly SB having meltdowns and stress shopping, which is pretty good entertainment I think. But hey, my wild-mustang-dressage-stallion is still burning hay, so I thought you might want to know what's going on with him.

rawr

When we (more or less) left off, he was in pro training 2x a week and I was riding the other days. Then BAM no riding for me. Between the godawful weather and Courage being a "challenging" horse, trainer said that riding him 2x a week was a hazard to everyone (she's not wrong) and we agreed to pick up again when I'm back in the saddle.

tail straight in air=no fun for anyone

Courage was essentially untouched for the month of December. It was mostly because I was at home in crippling pain, but Lindsey made me feel good about it by saying he probably needed a brain reset anyways and maybe a month to himself would give us more information and let him de-stress a little.

all wild mustangs wear blankets. yes.

Welllllllll let's just say the information I garnered was that Courage does really, really poorly with time to himself. The horse went feral. He was uncatchable. Un-handle-able. Unlikable. He spooked at everything and the few times I saw him, was a complete idiot. Like. Let's not talk about the night it took me 45 minutes to catch him in the indoor and then he soaked through two coolers. (And made me late on pain meds and omg that night hurt very very much).

horse shaming has it's own billboard

I'm finally starting to feel human again (many thanks to Ashley the Ninja Goddass, aka my Physical Therapist), so Courage is going back to work. Auntie Crystal recommended vienna reins for him, and despite my initial misgiving, these babies are life changing for Courage.

um hellooooooo

However, godawful weather has been a constant around here. Not a joke--we're breaking all the records since before they started keeping records. Which is stupid. But regardless, between me feeling like a steaming pile of poo most of the time and the roads being somewhere between "dangerous" and "terrifying" for most of the past few weeks, I get to the barn about three times a week.

who recognizes this horse? i do not

We're just lunging in vienna reins, which is actually super interesting to do with Courage, but not super interesting to talk about doing. For example, Courage physically doesn't understand how to step up into the canter like a dressage horse--he just tenses his underneck, braces, and flings himself. The shit transition translates into a shit gait and the whole thing is a shit show.

what? no. surely not this horse!

So. Since I can't ride, I've spent lots of time experimenting with how to explain to Courage that he can step up from behind and stay soft in his body. We do lots of spiral in/spiral out with w/t transitions until he's forward and through. And then we do trot/canter transitions with the same idea and just stay calm and patient.

withers lifted, hind legs stepping through. omg.

See, most of you checked out already because lunging is massively boring to do, much less to talk about doing. BUT. You'll notice that is a canter picture. And I don't usually post canter pictures because canter is not our thing.

i made a trail of shavings over the ice!

The Ninja Goddess says riding is 1-2 weeks out. The realist in me says riding a certain Wild Mustang Dressage Stallion with no turnout in a spooky indoor with snow sliding off the roof in subfreezing temps is not a great idea for a recent neck injury, even when one has a brain injury to impair one's judgement. The weather man says we're in for a deep(er) freeze.

this is why you have no friends, weatherman.

But spring is coming, I will get better, and someday, I will sit on my horse again.

Dammit. Just you wait.