Working "out of it".

Well, Gus is slightly off still on the, what seems to be, left fore. However the more and more B and I look at him the more and more we think it's higher up (say shoulder/back/etc). And as he's done in previous weeks, he did eventually work out of most of the stiffness.

We started off on the lunge and unlike the previous weeks, Gus decided to attempt to kill me again. I lost track of how many times I had hooves flying at my head ... I guess Gus was feeling frisky with the cooler weather. Oh well. I'm used to it.

Once we got past that and started on the undersaddle work, it became evident that Gus wasn't 100% on the left - or at least with the left front. Funny thing was, it was worse going to the right then to the left. Because of that, B thinks we're dealing with something higher up ... perhaps chiropractic will help. I guess I need to save up for that again.

Lesson-wise, we worked on serpentines again and trotting on the second track. We started off with 3 and 4 loop serpentines at the trot. Once those were going well and Gus was starting to loosen up, we proceeded to work on the quarterline/second track. The goal with straightness - and umm, we didn't quite manage that at first but by the end of the exercise we had the straightness almost nailed. We also did some changes across the diagonal using the smaller arena that was set up by working off the quarterline. Those helped Gus stay focused and balanced, with most of his weight back on his hindend.

Canter work started and ended on the quarterline/second track. The objective was straight, balanced and supple. We just about nailed that too. The hardest part was half-halting upon approaching the short side and doing the sorta-kinda turn-on-the-haunches to get a square turn. Gus was much better at the end ... and we actually had some nice canter work on his bad side (aka right side).

This weekend is the show at the barn again. I'm hoping to get a lot more photos on Friday of all the ponies, so stay tuned.