Constantly changing plans

I went out to the barn on Monday with the intention of doing a spa day for Otter and his tack, along with riding.  Spa day ended up getting scrapped because I just didn't feel like pulling out the clippers to clean him up, or felt like spending the whooping 5 minutes it takes to pull his mane.  So instead I just tacked up and went to the outdoor ring to work on our dressage skillz.

Warmed up like normal, and did some spiral circles at the trot.  Going to the left was good, right still needs work to be well balanced.  Moved into the canter and the right departures were horrible.  So started doing canter transitions, circle, canter leg yield to the rail, trot, trot leg yield to the rail, canter transition, rinse and repeat.  It seemed to help our balance and canter departures.  I was super pleased with how much he was using his hind end overall, especially in the trot.  Unfortunately, one of the side effects of him using his hind end more is a twisted shoe.

Please excuse the Thrushbuster stains.  His feet smelled a little funky when I cleaned them out

 Luckily, since our barn has so many horses, our farrier is always out at the barn on Tuesdays and Thursdays, so I just added him to the list to do today.

Spent Tuesday morning finalizing some wedding stuff, then headed out to the barn.  Got there just in time to hold him for the farrier.  Otter has been pretty skittish for the farrier the past several times, because he believes the boogyman lives in the back aisle where the farrier works.  Having gotten used to him being the one the farrier could always depend on to behave, I am not okay with his new behavior and was glad to be able to be out there while the farrier was there.  I armed up with carrots, a chain over his nose, gloves and a dressage whip, and proved the point the honey catches more flies than vinegar.  Never once had to touch him because he was so into the smell of the carrots, he couldn't have cared less about his surroundings.  Yay for small wins!  Hopefully he's forgotten all about the bogeyman now, and will just be looking for carrots back there now.

Otter also had some hives on him when I went out there today.  Not sure if it's from all the fungal shampoo, or just the bugs and humidity ( I know they make me hivey and itchy).  I decided not to scrub him after today's ride, and we will see what happens tomorrow.  

Our ride today was good, but I kept it short because of the heat. I originally wanted to jump, but the footing outside just wasn't good enough.  So decided to do some more flat work, and  focus more on myself today, and in doing so, I got a lot of really good work out of Otter.  I need to really make sure that I use more of my legs and seat to balance and bend him than my legs. Tried a little bit of a sitting trot in the new saddle and was glad to find out I was able to balance a lot easier.

Hoping I'll be able to jump some in the morning before I have to head into work.