One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

He nearly decks me but is an angel with Sofie on board!

Things had been steadily improving with Pea, though there were still issues to work though, however he is now back to a week of light work. I've had a few issues with his hind quarters/hind legs for a while now as he can get stiff in them, especially if it's cold. This past week he's not done much work as it's been freezing temperatures which has resulted in frozen/hard arenas and although I have an indoor, it's always in use when I'm down. Luckily, Wednesday wasn't too bad so I popped him on the lunge as he hadn't done any work since the Saturday. I like to lunge at least once a week as it lets me see how he's moving and also I can work on him learning to support himself rather than leaning on me. I let him have a walk and trot on each rein without his side reins on to begin with as a bit of a warm up and so I could see how he was and I noticed that he was being a bit stiff behind and not properly bending his off hind leg. He did slightly get better after warming up a bit so I popped the side reins on for a short while and he wasn't too bad. He was very eager in canter on the left rein which I think is a good sign but I didn't want to canter too much as his hind was giving me a bit of bother.

Friday I decided to give him a bit of a stretch and worked him for around 20 minutes, just riding long and low in walk and trot as the arena was still slightly hard. He wasn't moving forward as eager as he has been so I didn't push too much and just worked on a few basic circles and some leg-yield to try and get him working a bit better. Yesterday (Saturday) I took him for a hack which I don't get to do too often so it's nice to just let him stretch his legs a bit better and he sometimes goes a bit better as it's straighter lines. Then today, I tried to school him a bit and had my Dad look at him when I trotted. He noticed that he was slightly stiff behind and reluctant to bend the leg properly as well. I was debating about asking for canter but in the end decided I would just see how he went, however, I really didn't expect the explosion that came out of him! He flat out refused to canter and very nearly managed to deck me - not helpful when there's a few others riding in the arena and your 4 year old niece watching! I decided to trot him round a bit more and ask again in case it was just naughtiness but he was really not happy about cantering so I decided to just quit whilst I was ahead. I did give him a canter yesterday out hacking and he was fine but I'm guessing that's because it was on a straight section and in the arena he has to bend which he is probably finding difficult.


It's quite frustrating as he had been going well but he has the physio coming out at the beginning of February so I've decided to just do some pole work and long and low work this week to keep him ticking over and see how he feels. Hopefully the physio will really help as I don't think the chiro was going deep enough to sort out his issues.. 

Thanks for reading,
Laura xx