Saturday was round three of the saddle fitter coming out. I can tell that Mort is much happier over his topline much earlier in the ride with our saddle and half-pad changes. I was putting a riser in the rear of the saddle as it was throwing me a bit on my seat bones and into the dreaded chair seat position. Some of that is just because of my natural inclination toward that position but there was a point during these experiments where my position was a lot more effortless and I was wondering if we could find that sweet spot again.
Turns out that the new half-pad was the culprit. It fits him and the saddle well, but it put the front of the saddle up a bit. She stuffed in some more padding in the saddle and I hopped on him to try it out. Immediately I felt more secure with where my seat was hitting the saddle. And Mort was still happy and comfortable over his topline. We went on to have an awesome ride where he was forward and soft and round and reaching. We had more relaxed walk/trot transitions than we had poor ones. That's a ratio I want to get used to. All of this with only being able to ride in a small part of the arena due to the wet. I had to force myself to stop instead of just riding all day on what he was giving me. What a good boy.
Two seriously good rides in a row cemented in that I think I'm going to try for the WWU schooling show at the beginning of next month. I'm hoping to get a stall so that trailering will be more spaced out and (hopefully) go well. I'll probably do some combination of training and first level. I don't want to push him--both because we've been working so much on relaxation lately and because it's the first trip in over a year. We'll see how it goes!
Sunday was wet and rainy (again). I hopped on him and was going to go for a long walk along the road. He started off well, walking forward on a loose rein. We got to where we were going to go around a turn and he stopped an refused to go forward. I let him stand a look for a few minutes and asked him to go forward again. He wouldn't, so we were side-passing down the hill when the scary culprit of his fear showed their faces. Two lovely people on a walk with their dog. I know--terrifying. I have zero clue as to why Mort was scared of them but he just about left the area. I actually jumped off and we went up into a drive to let them pass. As they got closer he realized they were not horse murderers and settled some. Horses, man.
It's really hard to get back up on him without a mounting block, and I worry about what it does to his back since I'm so bad at it, so I just hand walked him. We went around the corner and across the bridge with zero issues or spooking. I even let him grab a few mouthfuls of grass along the side of the road. I did hop back on him when we got back to the barn and the mounting block. We walked in the field some. I also played a bit with him in the arena. He was lovely and relaxed on the side of lazy.
After that he had a bit of a spa day where I scrubbed his legs and tried making him look handsome and shiny in spite of the mud and dust. He'll get today off to give the arena another day to dry out.
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