Chaos

No, that's not Alex dressed up for Halloween, but wouldn't that be awesome?? 

It's been a long time since I posted...guilty :-/ Things have been totally crazy around here.

The saddle fitter was able to come early (10/10/13) and... Even after a near gutting of the excessive flocking, Alex has grown out of my saddle.  Yes, apparently I've fed and worked my horse so well that he's gained quite the topline.  The newly repaired County Stabilizer XTR Medium no longer fits my beast of a horse... insert swear word here [......]

This was proven further by sitting in a saddle with a 1/2 larger tree size and feeling Alex bounce along almost to the point of bouncing me out of the saddle.  We did try a demo Innovation for a few days, but unfortunately it had standard flaps and my knees poked over the front of the flap! 

SO, after much searching without finding... yesterday I ordered a brand new County Stabilizer XTR.  Basically, the same saddle I currently have, 17.5 with a Low Forward Flap just a 1/2 size larger tree...

Have I mentioned that I have the best husband ever??  Honestly, I wish I could have found something used, I really do, but I am so excited to be getting a new saddle, I've never had a new saddle... like ever in my whole life (29 years) of riding.  Then, I feel guilty, because it's a lot of money :-/  Then I'm excited again :-)

Other than that, not much else has been going on, Alex spent about two weeks being absolutely brilliant (like we hacked around a different part of the farm and he was totally chill by himself).  Then with the weather change in the last week, he's turned into an idiot.  For example, the second ride of the fall in the scary indoor, Alex did a lot of bolting at every little noise.  One such bolting went straight sideways into the concrete wall, smashing my leg and dragging it along the wall for two strides.  Thankfully he missed smashing my knee and scared himself enough that he'll probably never do it again, but damn does my leg hurt.  I rode last night, after lunging out as much of the crazies as possible, my leg was mostly fine until we started cantering when it hurt so bad I had to stop.

Today was pedicure day and I was exhausted.  We'll be back at it tomorrow. 

P.S.  I'm totally slacking at the 2-Point Challenge...

Baseline

Just a quick post tonight...I managed to get my baseline, which was what I consider pitiful... 2:05. There's obviously room for lots of improvement!

Alex was very good tonight and I mostly stopped worrying about the saddle, with the help of everyone's kind comments, but then he took a couple tight steps at the trot to start off. I was puzzled, then he quickly worked out of it.

I'm still keeping an eye on him, checking his back and trying not over do it on a daily basis. That's all I can do. If he seriously goes into pain mode, I'll manage it with lunging and BoT. It's only a few weeks.

See, I feel better already :-)

I might be crazy...

I must be insane, but I just joined the Two-Point Challenge hosted by L. Williams at Viva Carlosand Hillary at Equestrian at Hart so we will see how much punishment my legs, back and butt can handle! Baseline coming tomorrow night, it's bound to be pitiful...anyone else into self inflicted punishment, feel free to join the rest of us in our suffering.

My saddle came back this past weekend.  It looks great, but the panels are super "fluffy" meaning very well stuffed with flocking making the saddle look, dare I say it, narrow??  No... no... not narrow!  The saddle fitter is not scheduled to come till 10/22 and I'm practically wringing my hands about the saddle not being right and messing up Alex's back again.  It's not a terrible fit, but I do think that the flocking needs to be adjusted in the front panels and probably have some of it removed to make it fit correctly.  Seriously though, I live in fear of the fitter somehow telling me this saddle won't work...like now all the sudden he grew out of this saddle, we've had so much bad luck in this area... I know, I know, I'm negative Nancy, but right now, I am missing the demo saddle.

In other news, Alex has been going really well lately we've progressed to a leg-yield at the trot that doesn't look half bad.  Today we had company in the arena, despite some gawking and one turbo boost forward complete with giraffe stance and groaning sound effects brought on by cantering at the same time as the other horse, it went quite well.  Of course I spent the whole time worrying about the saddle...

10/22 cannot come soon enough! Deep breaths.