Calvin Update 7.26.15

The good news is Calvin was 100% sound when I jogged him the other day! I text the pictures of his foot injury to my trimmer and she asked "is that from him hitting himself or an abscess?" An abscess?! I might have freaked out a bit, abscesses take forever to heal and are so much work. Typically horses get abscesses from bruising,  it takes a days/week to show up and is typically caused by stone bruising (e.g. riding on too-rough terrain without hoof boots/shoes) that erupts later. Horse that have abscesses are usually dead lame, meaning they limp very severely. Luckily it wasn't an abscess and he's just clumsy.

He was sound after a few days, but I still gave him a week off of riding. Yesterday we did some arena work in the blazing sun. He was very distracted, trying to whinny at his buddies and not pay attention to me. However, I just did my best to keep his mind busy. For Calvin, this means asking him to move forward. He's a pretty lazy horse, so the answer to most of his distraction is asking him to go a bit faster, it get's him focusing back on his legs and makes the workout more strenuous. This tires him out pretty quickly since he's a bit out of shape (and slightly chubby), so it's win-win. By the end he was going long-and-low, stretching, and paying attention. 

 I'm trying really hard to only use my hands to keep his head and neck centered and using my legs to indicate which direction I want him to go. The goal of classical dressage is to have all movement, whether faster or slower, steering, etc., be based on legs and seat. While the hands just keep the horse centered and straight, or slightly bent if doing lateral work. The true test of this of course is to ride bridleless, that way you can only use legs to steer. However, we're not quite there yet ;) This is not seen often in modern dressage, where the riders are hanging off their horses mouths to make sure they don't run off. While this may win competition, this isn't what I consider good dressage. We don't mind taking things slower to make sure he's a happy horse that doesn't get burnt out on riding.

Speaking of taking things slow, here's a short video of Calvin and a sprinkler, he really enjoys water:

Calvin & the Sprinkler