Wolves and tractors
Iris continues to progress nicely. On Friday we had the dentist over to do both ponies' teeth and take out Iris' wolf tooth. The consequence of that is that she should be able to wear a bridle more comfortably, but not for a few weeks, so it will be a while before we can ride out. Not that I have any problem with riding out bitless, but I don't think my insurance covers it.
Meantimes, we will continue to ride in the halter and maybe, if it ever arrives, we might move onto a sidepull. Turns out those are hard to obtain here, or at least decent ones are.
Today was interesting because when I brought her in to work her, the hay in the field beside the school was being baled and she was very anxious about the tractors. I'm not entirely accustomed to horses being flustered by tractors because the last yard also did plant hire and they got very used to them going past. Iris was unimpressed and quite skittish, so we stopped at the entrance to the field and after watching them for a while she began to realise they weren't going to hurt her and calmed down a whole lot. She was still watching them intently, but I figured we could get over to the arena and get some work done.
I spent a while just helping her to move around and distract her from being anxious about sinister horse-eating tractors. Once we seemed to be somewhere nearer our normal starting point I put my saddle on and we had a bit of a ride. She was quite up and it felt like her trot had a lot more bounce to it than normal, but although she wanted to keep an eye on the tractors she was generally pretty great. It was easy to bring her attention back and to direct her.
I find her response to stuff that bothers her quite reassuring- she certainly lets you know that she's concerned about something but she still comes back nicely. She can certainly move her feet briskly when so inclined, though.
She still finds it very hard to bend to the right, which is quite possibly something that came of protecting that wolf tooth but may now be more ingrained in her way of going. I will get in touch with the chiro tomorrow, because I suspect a treatment might really help with that. Still no word from the saddle fitter I hoped to get out to check my saddles either, annoyingly. I think my saddle is alright on her, but I would really like an expert view on that.
Meantimes, we will continue to ride in the halter and maybe, if it ever arrives, we might move onto a sidepull. Turns out those are hard to obtain here, or at least decent ones are.
Today was interesting because when I brought her in to work her, the hay in the field beside the school was being baled and she was very anxious about the tractors. I'm not entirely accustomed to horses being flustered by tractors because the last yard also did plant hire and they got very used to them going past. Iris was unimpressed and quite skittish, so we stopped at the entrance to the field and after watching them for a while she began to realise they weren't going to hurt her and calmed down a whole lot. She was still watching them intently, but I figured we could get over to the arena and get some work done.
I spent a while just helping her to move around and distract her from being anxious about sinister horse-eating tractors. Once we seemed to be somewhere nearer our normal starting point I put my saddle on and we had a bit of a ride. She was quite up and it felt like her trot had a lot more bounce to it than normal, but although she wanted to keep an eye on the tractors she was generally pretty great. It was easy to bring her attention back and to direct her.
I find her response to stuff that bothers her quite reassuring- she certainly lets you know that she's concerned about something but she still comes back nicely. She can certainly move her feet briskly when so inclined, though.
She still finds it very hard to bend to the right, which is quite possibly something that came of protecting that wolf tooth but may now be more ingrained in her way of going. I will get in touch with the chiro tomorrow, because I suspect a treatment might really help with that. Still no word from the saddle fitter I hoped to get out to check my saddles either, annoyingly. I think my saddle is alright on her, but I would really like an expert view on that.