[Monthly Review] January 2016

January saw us finally getting some potential answers for Pea's behaviour over the past 7 months. The vet visits our yard once a month as I'm on quite a large livery so I decided to put his name down to get him checked for whether there could potentially be a shoulder or back issue. You can read the full post here but as a summary he ended up having back x-rays which showed a few vertebrae closer together than normal and so he had steroid injections to try and help. 

We then had to lunge for a few days following including some work with the side reins on before I could ride. However, riding was put off longer due to the cold weather we had freezing our arenas and we haven't had our indoor back. He then had the physio out which the vet recommended we keep and she carried out some work on his back (read it all here) as well as suggesting I do regular carrot stretches. 

Again, it was a few days until I could ride again due to the weather, resulting in him not being ridden for two weeks (though he did get lunged). In typical Laura fashion, I decided to take him for a quick hack when he'd been in for two days...not quite the most sensible thing to do! I think it's safe to say that Pea was feeling very fresh after trotting off down the drive and then threatening to spook and run at every little thing... 

Since then, I've schooled him a few times. The vet recommended that I trot round on a

long rein as soon as we get in the arena for a short while and then have a canter round to loosen him up before slowly gathering him up. So far, he seems to be going quite well. He still has the odd grumpy moment but I've come to learn after 7 years that that's never going to change! He's a lot freer in the canter, and I'm slowly working on getting him to canter round large circles so we can hopefully progress to him comfortable cantering a 20x40 such as if he was doing a dressage test. 

The plan for February is to do more pole work, keep up lunging him once a week in his side reins and work on smaller circles in both trot and canter. 

Thanks for reading,

Laura xx