Preliminary Pictures...

Sorry guys - busy week. OChem midterm, another Biochem midterm in three days. But I haven't forgotten about you.

I have hardly ridden all week, either - but Pandora got a trace clip and her shoes pulled for the winter. If she does well with them off, I might just leave them off. The other option of course is just all the way the other direction, because if she can't maintain traction on our awful wet muddy ground during Spring events, I might just shoe all four so we can stud behind. But ugh, that would suck. Prefer barefoot.

Rode last night and she was a bit touchy at the trot but walk was fine, so we did lots of lateral work.

I think all the work I've done getting her haunches OFF my right leg - because she swings her haunches out to the right - has been a little one-sided. All of that work puts her squarely onto my outside (left) rein, but I haven't done as much work pushing her over from the LEFT leg, because she does that too much already.

But.

I realized last night that she really, really just doesn't have a connection with my right rein when it's the outside rein. Pretty much ever. Which is probably a huge contributor to why we have left bend issues, along with all the haunch-swinging etc. So the seesaw swings back in the other direction, as always, and now I'm going to make sure I'm doing a balance of lateral work on both sides, not just the side I need to correct things on.

So, full post later etc - I really probably WILL get it done tonight - but here are some pictures to satisfy your appetite just a little.


Here I am waiting for my formal inspection, with Pandora none too thrilled about the wait. That's my standing wrap on her leg there. It passed the first time :-)


A nice easy walk before flatwork starts.

As a side note, my goodness she is FUZZY in these pictures! She got a trace clip earlier this week. It, um, isn't terrible for my first real clip also considering my clippers aren't really meant for body clipping.

Mom and I got a great comparison conformation shot to the one we took almost exactly a year ago. The differences are still subtle, but you can really tell, especially if you click on them and look at them full size. Her topline in general is smoother, the base of her neck more muscled. She's not standing up as well in the current one, but oh well.

Again, here's the shot from last year:

And here's the one from this week.


And to think that's the GOOD side of the clip...oh well, it keeps her cool, what more can I ask?