Tough Ride...

Last night, was a little bit of a tough ride. In keeping the positivity of the weekend going, I am once again going to chalk it up to 2 separate things:
1 - Him not eating before I ride...whenever that happens, he always gets grumpy about it 1/2 through our school
2 - I asked for more - a lot more and I could feel him instantly tense up a through his back as I was asking for more.
Our warm up, was GREAT! Lots of walk trot walk trot transitions, some walk halt, bending on circles and serpentines etc. It was a solid 20 minutes of GOOD warm up...then, I shortened my reins a couple inches and really asked him to use his butt and he almost immediately tensed through his back. I tried gaining the suppleness again through the transitions to ensure he was working from behind, but he just didn't want to believe me that it was going to be okay...so, the Carrie of old would have fought with him at this point and said 'YOU'RE DOING IT YOU STUBBORN DONKEY'...but, the Carrie of new said, 'Okay, I feel you getting tense and short in behind, let's leave it at that for now'...the WORST part about it, (well, not only that he wasn't feeling the best) was that The Boss and Kelly were going to be stopping in!!! ARRGH!!! Of COURSE he wasn't feeling up to par when they happened to be coming.
However - we are ready to start lessons again...YAY!!!! I totally need to boss to start kicking my ass again. 3 months without a lesson has not done ANYTHING for my position...I can feel my lower leg swinging when I am not paying that much attention to it. So - once I am back from vacation the beginning of July, we will start with some lessons so she can help me really get his engine going again.
Of course, being the amazing person she is suggested I switch one of the ring work days for lunging with side reins...that way, he wont have to worry about me pissing him off on his back asking him to collect, and he can get comfortable with it again without me bouncing around up there...sounds good to me!! So, I will do that for sure on Thursday evening.
Canterdown on August 15 - REALLY is a possibility..the next three weeks are pivotal and it all depends on how determined I am to push him in our conditioning. We're to do 5 mins trot, 1 min walk, repeat x5 then x6 next week and x7 the week after. DVM Extraordinaire also said we should be doing solid hill work for 30 - 40 minutes...yay...not....again, it is all up to me now. The Boss again being amazing said, 'Canterdown has pre-entry don't they?'...the jumps are about 2'3, max...and I am pretty sure we could trot around the whole course which is like 800 m or something sill like that. BUT - it is a strong possibility and something I am absolutely gunning for....
ANNNNNNNNND - Barn owner Jen BOUGHT 4 XC JUMPS!!! so, we now have a total of 7!! AND Aaron is going to come out one afternoon and make us some more!! So, there you have it, we will have some xc jumps to jump before long!! :-)
Tonight, he has the day off, tomorrow we work-hack, Thursday we lunge and Friday morning (before we head up to North Eastern Ontario to an island in the middle of a lake) we will ring work it again.
I'm determined to make Chester as close to 100% as I can by this time in 3 weeks...July 11 is our deadline (and it also happens to be the day Dreamcrest is holding its event, in which Kelly is taking Molly and in which I am going for support.... :-) ).
LET'S GO PICKLE!