This is a few days late but I was super tired after my lesson and then have been busy with work so have only just had chance to write up about it now! If you follow me on Facebook (search for LB Equestrian) then you will already have an idea!
Unfortunately, Pea has started to misbehave a little lately but I booked in a lesson as Pea was in the last week of his bute trial so I wanted to have a chat with my instructor so see her opinion about him. Unfortunately she believes that there is definitely something wrong with Pea and that we should definitely stay on the bute long-term. However, she thinks there may be an issue in the front end as when we got round to trying a bit of canter, Pea tripped a lot when I went to get off his back and she reckons it looked like he was finding it really hard to keep his balance in front.
As we often do, we did some pole work again using four poles. We started by doing one, then building up to the four, firstly spaced apart before bringing them closer together. This really helped him to loosen up over the poles and by gradually bringing them closer together it stopped him from hopping over them so much. Pea has a bit of a defence mechanism of hopping over the poles rather than lifting his legs correctly as he finds it easier. Unfortunately for him, it's not what we want and it won't help him but the more he does the poles, the easier it becomes.
Once he loosened up a bit in the trot, we decided to try a bit of canter after we had gone over the poles. On the left rein, he was really reluctant and this was when Cathy suggested getting off his back. I was a bit reluctant as I always worry about him bucking but after we realised he was getting unbalanced we decided to take a short break. We then swapped reins and went onto the right rein where we had a bit of a longer canter, although it was still only about 5 strides!
We finished the session off by looking at doing some in-hand work. Cathy suggested that we do some in-hand poles either before a schooling session or just as a session on there own. We put three poles together and walked over a few times before gradually raising one pole at a time. We then did the raised poles in the middle before moving to the higher end of the pole to really get him picking his feet up.
Pea is now on the bute long-term and we might look into getting a vet to look over his front end in the future. For now, he's been trotted up and seen by the vet numerous times that I don't think it's a matter of urgency as they've never noted anything so we'll see how winter pans out. It might mean no dressage, or I might do a couple of walk-trot tests but for now, I'm looking into lots of ways to keep him supple.
Thanks for reading,
Laura xx
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