Fairly boring week

Well, Muffin's feet looked like this all week:

Lost shoe

shoes slipped off and slid back

So he has been standing (and sleeping) in his stall all week:(  I had scheduled a lesson with Susan the dressage trainer for today, and it seemed as though all the stars were aligning to STOP me!  But I persevered and took that lesson:)  I had to hold horses for the farrier, Tiki needed his shoes done obviously, and I hadn't ridden him in a week, but overall we had a most excellent go round.

I requested some canter work today vs. so much trot work.  He was extremely tight and noticeably tender on the LF that had the missing shoe.  Susan worked on getting me to close my leg, keep my hand soft and still, and slow him down.  I worked on keeping contact even from a back/trot transition (where if I don't give with my hand we wants to just keep backing up), and eventually we did pretty well.  On the halt/back/canter transitions, I worked on keeping my shoulders back and using my seat in the upward transition so he didn't take any quick steps, and we cleaned up the downward transitions so he went from trot HALT and canter HALT with no messy steps in between.

The canter was good, very light and easy.  We worked on the 20m circle doing canter/halt/back/canter and after doing it about 10 times got it down pretty nice!  Finished up with shoulder-in and haunches-in down the longside and down the centerline.  He did GREAT!  We FINALLY have a real haunches-in!  All my hard work has been paying off because last time she worked those with me, I was probably about 60% good on the shoulder-in and about 40% good on the haunches-in.  This time we were 99.9%.  Next time we will learn how to do a half pass, woo hoo!

So for a pony that hadn't been ridden in a week, had a lost shoe for 4 days, and had 2 rear shoes slipped back and slid to the side, PLUS a tendency to be tight and not 100% after shoeing anyway ... it was a fantastic lesson.  I'm glad I pushed through and went for it even though the stars were not aligning to actually ride.  We needed a boost I think, and this was it!  Lovely Rider is supposed to hop on him this weekend, so hope he behaves for her!