Sunday was an hour of road hacking with a friend – up, down, up again. Tristan was jigging his way downhill again so I did get off and handwalk him. I am a bit frustrated by finding the balance between “nice big forward walk home” and “jig jig jig until you trip.” Sitting deep and quiet is one thing; hauling on his mouth to no effect is another.

That said: at about the 45 minute mark he gets much better. He eases into it and focuses on the road ahead instead of the barn behind. The solution here might be just to keep him out for longer. Possibly this Sunday we can hit another road and do 45 minutes out, 45 minutes back.

Before then, we need to get back in the ring. I haven’t schooled him outside of a lesson in 3 weeks, yikes. I am the worst. I just keep getting to the barn and tacking him up and then being physically unable to set foot in the ring, so we head outside instead.

Monday was shot #2 in his loading doses of Pentosan, and this should start to be the tipping point of feeling better – this week or next. We’ll see. Tonight the temperature will drop about 40 degrees and we’ll get an inch or two of that-four-letter-word-that-starts-with-s. Then tomorrow spring will arrive for good. (I know I keep saying and thinking that, but eventually it has to be true, right?)

Starting off my April goals with a long hack last night. It was high 30s, not windy, and sunny. Snow was melting, Tristan was fresh, and the sun was out! I jumped on bareback with his XC bridle.

I have to get a better picture of the house up on the left, because I covet it.

One of the barn owners’ husbands repairs boats. In the winter the tarps flap all around and provide an excellent desensitization tool!

LOOK MY TRAILER HAS TIRES STILL. WHEW.

This was supposed to be a photograph of the culvert & ditch fast with runoff, but it turned into a neat optical illusion of Tristan the Dala horse.

At least, by the calendar.

Couple of nice rides. Longeing on Friday, then trot sets Saturday night. Focus on rhythm, straightness, and stretching over the topline, building fitness and muscle both. We did two 8 minute trot sets and a few canter sets that went trot-canter-trot over 5 minutes. We also did about 6 minutes of a trot that included a trip down a line of poles on the center line with each pass: poles, turn right, poles, turn left, and so on. He was all-over tired and relaxed when we were done, and recovered quickly and well.

Today, a hack out, about 30 minutes, up and down dirt roads and up and down the big hill, bareback, with fleece quarter sheet. It was bitterly cold when the wind was up, but sunny with melted snow runoff glistening on the dirt roads. Actual temperature around 12 degrees but it never felt like that: always warmer or colder.

I was extremely pleased with how happy he was to be out, firm and swinging and forward even heading away from the barn, and how straight he held himself through his body. We went straight up the hill, no meandering, just push and swing from the hind end, and the same back down. He was tired and moving slowly at the end of it. His balance was far better going downhill, as he held himself inside his body: no stutter steps, no swerving through the shoulder.

This week will be difficult with evening work commitments, but we’ll see what we can salvage for a schedule.

Yesssss! Daylight! Temperature weather (high 20s, sunny)! A free afternoon!

We went places. Tristan was happy as a clam to be out, though he was happier to head back to the barn at haying time to the point of quite a bit of jigging, which meant we added 20 minutes to the ride as we trotted away down another short dirt road.

Same view, taken about 6 months apart.

I had been intending to explore a new road today, but after 10 minutes on it, I had been passed by 4 cars, not a single one of which slowed down. Seriously. Whipping by at 20 mph, minimum. Waving cheerily to me. Assholes. Thank God Tristan is very, very chill about such things, but all of the cars were coming at us head-on, and thus guaranteed to be a certain distance away. I did not want to wait around for the car that zoomed out and around us going 20 and kicked up gravel in its wake. So we headed back to our old familiar roads.

Our favorite hill in the distance.

The roads were soft enough to see his hoofprints, and I was especially happy to see him tracking up fully in the trot, stepping in his own hoofprints, and overstepping a teensy bit going up the steep hill at the walk.

This hill is actually much steeper than it looks in the picture.

Handsome boy in the barn driveway. I spent probably 5 minutes trying to get a good picture of him, but some neighbor was shooting a LOT of guns, and he kept looking to see where the noise was coming from.

There we go! A bit yak-like, but the hair, it is coming out in clumps.

Overall, we were out for about 60 minutes, and he had a lovely big walk stride the whole time, with perhaps 5 minutes of trotting, and was overall exceptionally well-behaved. He had clearly worked a bit hard but not too hard, and as you can see from his foam was responsive to some softening. He was also straighter than he has often been on the road, and we worked on that: lining up all the parts of his body instead of wandering every which way.

With Daylight Savings (though it is kicking my ass from a sleep perspective) we might even get some weekday hacking in, which will be all to the good for overall fitness and muscle-building.

Tristan has always been mildly barn sour. In the outdoor, he bulges his circles toward the barn, and speeds up when approaching it. The first bit of a trail ride involves a lot of kicking and keeping him straight so he doesn’t swerve back. It’s far better than it has been in the past, mostly due to my better riding, but I think he’ll always have some of it. There is food in the barn, after all, and he can nap there and not work hard. It’s just the way he’s wired.

Yesterday, we headed up the hill to the fields. We ended up doing about three miles in an hour, which is a deceptively slow pace: 75% of it was on a pretty good incline, whether up or down. He was his usual self for a while, but then he settled in beautifully and was striding out and forward on a loose rein, interested in everything. He did have one little tantrum up in the fields, but to be fair, a flock of 50-75 birds took off from the brush and rattled it quite a lot in addition to the flapping noise of their wings. They were only about 15 feet away from us and startled rather suddenly. He danced around a few steps and swung himself toward home. I made him stand and calm and praised him for that, and we kept going.

At a certain point out, though, snowballs were building up in his feet and I could hear both gunshots and snowmobiles in the distance. The land we were on wasn’t posted against hunting, and though there were no snowmobile lanes on it, the VAST trails, a series of networked trails for snowmobiling, are a Big Deal in more rural parts of Vermont. I knew there was a loop of it about a mile and half from where we were but hadn’t seen any signs on this land – still, it was impossible to say with accuracy where the noises were coming from, but I could definitely tell they were getting louder. I did not want to encounter a snowmobile or series of them with Tris more up than he typically was.

So after I judged that we’d gone a fair distance, I turned around, and that’s when the fun started. Remember, most of the first half of our ride was going uphill; going home meant lots of downhill. And he was a jigging, snorting, recalcitrant asshole for every.single.step. I sat deep. I talked to him constantly, reminding him to waaaaaalk and stay eeeeeeasy. I gave hard half-halts every few strides. I halted him entirely when he was being especially punky. Nothing worked. I got five strides of walk, once, and that was it. I made sure to reward and praise him every time he relaxed for even a split second and he still went back to jigging and dancing around within seconds. I got frustrated, he got cranky, and with the snowballs in his feet, once we got back to more hard packed road he jigged, slipped, snorted, slipped, kicked out…you name it. I was hating how hard I was making my half-halts, even though he was going in a big fat French link loose ring snaffle – as forgiving a bit as it gets.

Eventually, when we got to the steepest part, I got off. It wasn’t worth having him fall to prove my point. We walked in hand about 150 yards through the worst and steepest part of it, and thankfully his ground manners are better than his under saddle manners. He was up and striding out and a little pushy, but not jigging or spooking. When it got flat again, I got back on, and when he was piggish about getting close to the barn I turned his ass around and trotted back up the hill about 50 yards. Then we walked calmly back, and we walked back and forth up and down the road past the entrance to the barn until he stayed on my aids and was listening to where I told him to go.

I led him into the indoor and walked around with him for about 10 minutes – he had gotten himself so worked up he was blowing out, though thankfully just warm and not sweaty.

I still feel wretched about using the bit that way. He didn’t much seem to care or notice, but that’s not how I want to ride my horse. If we’d been on flat ground, with a straightaway, away from the barn? I would’ve pushed him forward to burn some of the energy. But on a slippery downhill going toward the barn – no way was I going to let him trot or canter it out.

I love, love, love the roads we have around the barn and the near-endless road hacking we could do, but it is somewhat frustrating that there isn’t a flat road for miles. Everything is hills, up and down. It’s great for walking and building strength but only at the end of my ride yesterday, after a mile and a half uphill, did I hit a flat(ish) straightaway.

Lesson today, and we’ll see if he’s tired or sore from yesterday. Tuesday off, Wednesday longeing, Thursday riding, Friday longeing, and Saturday is still up in the air.

I did have second thoughts about my planned road hack yesterday when I stepped outside to find it was raining down pellets of ice from the sky, but went ahead anyway. We tacked up quickly and I went with a quarter sheet just in case it did start to come down harder.

We headed up the road and turned off into some new fields that I liked quite a bit. Tris was less than pleased with his lot in life: he had thrown a little spooking tantrum when a flock of birds took off underneath his nose, and the wind was starting to pick up and the icy pellets were actually picking up. Fair enough! That still didn’t excuse the jigging and the refusal to go where he was pointed. So I didn’t feel too bad for him when he flung himself around and onto an icy patch and slipped. I was asking him to go around it, after all.

We also had a fairly stringent conversation heading back down the road toward the barn about walking calmly and quietly when there was ice and snow on the road, especially going downhill, Tristan. Let’s just say I was glad I had opted for a saddle on this particular ride.