Jomping Saddle Woes

OK I tried like a bagillion freaking times to upload the dang video from a) my Droid (phone fail) b)Youtube (computer fail) and c) copying and pasting the damn URL (computer officially dumb dumb) and NONE of it is working.

So this means if you are dying to see the epic win that is me staying on my frisky TB bareback over a 3'3 oxer then please feel free to peruse my Facebook or click the "Yankee on Youtube" page up yonder.

Aight, to the meat of my tale. (teehee I'm blogging in my Finance class [taxes are depressing], I feel naughty).

Since his leg blow-up Sunday, I have been keeping him in his run/stall for about a week and it has sucked. He hates it, and I don't blame him! I tried turning him out with boots on last night but all the horses ganged up and attacked him, and cornered him and literally beat the shit out of his poor frightened self. I got a text from a girl at the barn saying she rescued him and I was quite thankful. Weird, since he' s been turned out with all of them for a month...PONYFACE JERKS!

Back to finding ample turnout inlimited space with many horse bodies.

Anyways, back to the subject.

Wednesday I attempted to ride him in dressage, but he was in a foul mood as well as stiff. He was not having it and I gave up after about 30 minutes. We all have bad days right?

Why yes that is a makeshift double bridle.

Win for pretty pictures though.

On to yesterday. I was thinking about doing a small funsies schooling jumper show saturday, or go foxhunting sunday, so I wanted to school him a bit over courses. My mom was visting so she came to the barn as well and I was hoping to show her our progress (she hasnt seen him in a year) and of course he was just a royal asshole.

I was so pissed. This was day two he was behaving abnormally horrendous.

I thought he'd work out of it, espechially since he ADORES jumping, but he just got worse and I was CONFUSED.

Never in my 6 years of ownership has he ever bucked so hard and high OR squealed so loud when I asked for transitions. It was so bad and just got progressively worse. Then he started refusing jumps, and not in his usual way. It was like, ears laid back, gnashing teeth, wiggly refusals. Usually he just drops a flithy shoulder like a punk, but this wasn't just him being annoyed, he was HURTING.

But where?

I ruled out lameness, since he rarely goes lame (funny since he was Sunday for some wack-ass reason) and is remarkably sound for a TB. I thought he might be stiff from his smaller confinement and no pasture turnout, and didnt rule that out immediately. And all his saddles should fit him just fine...plus he has a gel pad underneath his saddle as well. Silly me though, didn't take into consideration that after I gave him 2 months off (basically), he lost muscle and now his stadium saddle doesnt fit him as well.

Sure enough, I took it off and the improvement was instantaneous. No more angry pony!

That solved that right quick! I hadn't ridden bareback in about a year though and DAMN his withers suck...and he was slippery and sweaty. Delightful.

But we were productive in schooling courses, albeit the slight happiness and relief he felt that he transferred into "wildy" careening around corners and giddy squeals (different from his hateful ones) while I barely hung on...it was laughable.

So, now another decision to make. How to solve this issue.

Defiently more bareback rides when jumping (funsies) and a bit more free lunging/lunging sesh's with the training tools to help him gain muscle, and for sure some more hacks in a different saddle.

I REALLY cannot afford to buy a new saddle willy nilly and I DESPISE with the fire of a 1000 suns those stupid mattes pads everyone swears by and I refuse to buy into that sham.

For now I will stickwith bareback-ness.