Crabby

I'm not entirely sure what's gotten up Limerick's butt lately, but recently our rides have either been really good, where he's been super willing and soft, or pretty bad, where he locks his jaw, runs around like a giraffe, and runs through the bit like a freight train. On super awesome days, I *almost* forget his behavior on the bad days, but not quite. Our rides from Sunday and Monday are the perfect examples of Limerick's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde behavior.

Sunday, though not perfect, Limerick was damn close. We started out in the large front field at CVF, doing hill work and trotting over uneven terrain. We were probably out there for 15-20 minutes, all of it spent either walking or trotting (and some of it spent taking pictures...). Now, Limface has a tendency to get silly out in the field and can be insecure when he can't see his friends, but Sunday he whinnied twice, and that was that. He got over it, no more dramatics or protestations. He never tried to run back to the barn, didn't attempt to constantly angle his body in that direction, and two whinnies is probably an all-time low for us, so I considered that part of the ride a success. Then, because I wanted to do some canter work, we went into the outdoor. He was good, but has unfortunately started pulling down on the bit again, even in the three-ring :( I have decided that bits obviously aren't going to solve this problem and I refuse to use anything harsher, so we're going to start having flat lessons centered around this problem. I've fought a lot of pulling battles lately, but he gave me the day off, which is good because my hands are starting to actually ache afterwards. The ride was relaxing and just what I needed before an insane school week, plus it was gorgeous outside! Here are some pictures, the first three are from Hillary's visit that I just found, and the last ones are from our ride in the field on Sunday:

Enter Mr. Hyde. Monday, we actually had a pretty decent ride in the ring, though it still involved a small battle of wills about who would hold up Limerick's head... I think I won that one, until we headed out to the front field for a relaxing cool down. As you can see from the pictures, you walk up the gravel driveway going towards the field. We were at the top of the driveway when Limerick spotted a small piece of a white plastic bag clinging to the grass. No big deal, he gave it the hairy eyeball, took a step sideways, and we moved on to bigger and better things. Silly me, I assumed that was the end of the horse-eating plastic bag... hardly. 

After a few walk-canter explosions (I guess he really wanted to run?), I made him do some collected walk work and then turned to head back to the barn. That was when we discovered that the aformentioned plastic bag had blown up against the fence on the left side of the driveway, and we would have to walk right past it. We got maybe 12 feet away, Limerick saw it, side stepped a little (meanwhile, I'm kicking him as hard as I can), turned, spun around, and bolted forward maybe 5 or 6 strides, until we were back in the grass. At this point, I realized that he was being stupid on/very near gravel, which I was not going to fall off on, so I calmed him down and hopped off. Then, I led him back to the head of the driveway, trying to get him to walk past the plastic bag.. he still wouldn't go and started to try to back away, so I smacked him. He was being stupid and not using his brain, and hitting him apparently set off total chaos inside his little pony head, because he ripped the reins away from me and full-out galloped back to the barn. 

I could have killed him I was so mad, but I calmly went to retrieve him from Kimmie, got back on, and walked around the ring for a few more minutes until he stopped huffing and puffing and wasn't on fire... I haven't been out to the barn since then (I HATE SCHOOL), but I now have a dressage lesson tomorrow in the hopes that we can teach Mr. Limmers how to carry himself. I'll report back!

However, upon reflection, I'm quite certain that Limerick's attitude of late is a definite sign that he needs to be adjusted again. This is a work in progress, but hopefully the chiro will be out in the next week to do his back!