Happy Birthday Dino! 7 years old today :party:

Yesterday I plucked up the courage to take him over to Arrandene Open Space which is a local set of bridleways with a hill you can gallop up in the middle. It’s a hack along a main road though, with a double decker bus route and I’m not very brave at open spaces and galloping so I’m feeling quite pleased with myself. We went with our favourite hacking partners, Claire and Bug. I love being able to hack with Claire – she’s great as she’s pretty confident but she’s understanding of my occasional nerves, always asks before moving up a gear and never makes me feed bad if I say ‘actually can we not?’. We had two gallops up the hill – the first one was a bit nerve-wrecking for me, but the second time I enjoyed it. She asked if I wanted to go again but Dino was pretty tired and I had enjoyed it so we left it there. I think he had a good time – and I turned him back out for an hour or so when I got home so he had a good roll after getting all sweaty 🙂

So we had a good time and I’m feeling like my confidence has increased a bit and am pretty pleased with myself and I super chuffed with Dino as he was brilliant which seems to be his default setting at present. :db:

*drum-roll* WE HAVE CANTER!!! :yahoo: With a bit of a concerted effort over the past fortnight we now have a reasonably consistent 5 or 7 steps of left canter in the school. I’m very pleased – today he popped into canter from walk and was beautifully forward and responsive, despite it p*ssing it down with rain. We can only do straight lines and the right canter often doesn’t happen (that’s his weaker hind so he finds it hard to push off) but I feel like we’ve made a huge step forwards. Given how much better it is just in a couple of weeks I don’t think it will be long before we have a good canter on both reins.

Obviously this week has been very hard with losing Pico but Dino hasn’t been too upset by things. I’ll spare you the details but he had a good look, sniff (and chew) of the body when Pico went, called for him once when I took him back to his box that night, but hasn’t called or been looking for him since. He seems to understand and has accepted that his friend won’t be coming back. I’ve moved him along one box to a brighter box that has a window at the back and a new friend next door (otherwise he would have been a bit on his own and we didn’t want that) but he’s settled down nicely. In fact yesterday and today he’s been super forward and off the leg and really going well.

I had a brief chat with the vet before he left us on Thursday and we’ve agreed to leave the jaw alone for the moment. He didn’t think the lump had got smaller, but did agree with me it’s not grown in a couple of months so now we give it time and pray it sorts itself out. Much as I love Goncalo I’m happy to not see him again for a bit…! The next scheduled visit will be to take a look at Dino’s teeth in 6 months or so.

So pretty happy with how Dino is right now – going to get up early tomorrow and hopefully have another lovely ride in the quiet part of the day – need to get him working over raised poles to strengthen up that hind and help get the right canter going 🙂

Just to prove he can move when the mood takes him, I present some action shots:

There’s a few more on the Flickr stream if you click through 🙂

Interesting day for me today – I now understand why Dino looks so perturbed when the osteopath is twangling his neck vertebrae – it does feel funny!!

First things first: We had a nice ride this morning. He’s been going pretty well and I’ve started working on achieving canter in the school. More experienced and less impatient people would probably feel it could be left a bit longer but I really want to get it going – even if only for a few strides. He’s fine out on the ‘canter spot’ of the bridlepath and will pop forward with no bother but he has a real hang up in the school. He was going nicely on Saturday so I asked from walk and did one stride and then had a bucking fit 🙁 so we went round and try again and in the end got 5 strides nicely on the left rein. The right rein is more tricky but we did get a stride or two. Today tried again and got 5 strides on the left rein without much fuss, but the right I really don’t think that inside hind is strong enough to push himself off properly, an opinion the osteo agreed with as this morning was my turn to be assessed!

After Dino I popped myself down the road for my assessment with David and it was very interesting. He thinks my hips and lumbar spine are ok – pelvis is a tiny bit wonky but not very far out and probably not causing serious issues. What he did find though is that my right shoulder (I’m left handed) and neck on that side is very jammed up. Just like my pony! This is probably due to using a mouse a lot at work and getting into a habit of clenching my shoulder on that side. David did a bit of treatment to loosen it all up, and I’m going to have a couple more of those sessions. I do get a bit of shoulder pain on that side but I was quite surprised to find it’s actually quite uneven.

Interesting to think what effect this might be having on my riding – I often find Dino is bent right when we’re hacking although I feel like my seat is even. It probably is, mostly, but I might well be putting more weight on the right rein and tipping my head slightly to the right as everything is very stiff that side. Fascinating! I must get M to take some video in a while.

I think what I’ll do now is keep doing the transitions, flexion, leg-yield, shoulder-in work I’ve been doing with Dino but try to add in some in hand, or lunging work over raised poles to strengthen get his right hind moving better. I’ll keep with the little bit of canter we have in the school, so just 5 strides or so down the long side on the left rein but not worry too much about the right for the moment. He can sometimes get right canter outside although I think M gets it more consistently than I do probably in part as I’m loading that side of him more by being crooked.

ION I treated myself to an SLR camera. First attempts at working out where things are, LOL:
Dubious horse is dubious and thinks you should work out how to turn the flash off: