Pacha - march 21, 2011

I know it is so futile to spend time writing about horse riding when so much suffering is happening elsewhere in the world, i.e. Japan which is a country I am very fond of. But at least, it gives an opportunity for distracting our mind away from sadness, for one hour or two.
With horsemanship, there are ups and downs. With Pacha, we have been going through the latter over the last few days. He is unusually restless, in hand as well as mounted. When in hand, he attempts some nipping - not serious, but I will not tolerate it at all. His lower lip gets agitated for no reason, such as when pushing the haunches in hand slightly. He is restless at the mounting block. With patience, and firm voice, I can keep him steady until I get into the saddle, but he moves off immediately after. As for mounted work, it seems that we have gone back months of progress. It took me the hour to calm him down into an acceptable posting trot today! The weather was lovely, we were alone in the large arena. The walking session went fairly well, with long neck, nose down. Lateral work was even rather good, with sequences of LY and HP in forwardness and reasonably smooth. But then, sitting trot was not calm, with attempt to raise head, hollow back, and self started canter strike-off. I decided to move straight into canter work, as I oftendo . He heated up almost at once, too fast, not listening. I brought him on circles, but this did not calm him down as it normally does. I came back to halt for a while and then walk, hoping that he 'would forget the bad movement' as Baucher said. But seemingly, his memory was performing quite well today! I could not steady him over 10'. Transitions to trot were terribly substandard, with disorders, loss of cadence, head carriage joint feet and so on... I gave up canter and finally could bring him to some reason at posting trot. We ended with a few circles at canter - OK. We left it there and went back to stables, where I dried him up with a good bunch of straw.
This was one of the worst sessions I ever had with him, and it took me some time for wiping away the idea of giving him up..
But as all horsemen know, there are ups and downs, decidedly, in horsemanship!