And the rest of the herd?

Ginger

This pony is ridiculously adorable and I love her. As for her training? We're installing lighter canter take-offs and attempting to help her understand how to bend with a lighter rider on her back (I have too much influence, really)

The head shaking is greatly reduced, as is camel-mode.

The biggest issue when jumping her - besides the fact that I'm too heavy to jump often with her - is that my position just falls into a total mess when I jump her.

So back to the old stand-by: putting experienced riders on a green horse through a grid. Until she learns distances and pacing and striding... etc.

Junior

I'm pretty sure I haven't talked about him yet on the blog.

He's a very sweet 10 year old Dutch Warmblood owned by my farrier's girlfriend. He tore a ligament in his front right five years ago and was told he'd never be sound to ride again. He's come back, but we're fairly certain he'll never be up for heavy work and jumping again. Which is why I'm bringing him along to be a lovely asset to our lesson program.

He is a bit spoiled. He doesn't respect your legs, and he doesn't navigate very well. But his trot his delightfully lofty and his canter feels like its in slow motion.

I've been walking him over poles and doing lots of serpentines to start to regain some flexibility, but I'll have to get video soon.

Danny

After being retired from competition at the Fresno County Horse park (after a spectacularly terrible dressage test, let me tell you!) due to a corneal ulcer Danny got nearly a month off. He was getting steroids in his eye twice a day while the ulcer healed up. The vet had said he could come back into work after we stopped putting atropine into the eye (and therefore dilating it) but he was overly spooky and too difficult to manage or communicate with. He eventually came back into light work part way through March.

We pulled him off the steroids and the eye blew up again. I had the vet look at it and after dyeing the eye, we found there were no scratches anywhere, so we put him back on the steroids, with the stern admonition that this is a temporary solution.

In the meantime, he's been working well, although definitely not with the goals I had in mind when I was working him before Fresno. He's lost a lot of fitness & sensitivity, although he has come back from his time off with a remarkable and renewed vigor for jumping.

We had an opthamologist come out to look, and she said he needed surgery, and even with the surgery we'd probably only get 3-5 years of vision from the eye. What a blow. I felt terrible, and supremely at fault, even though horses be horses.

Then his owner hauled him up to Davis for the surgery, and the specialist there said, "you know... I'm not sure we need to jump into this. I think this horse is just a very slow-healing sort, and it'll heal up on its own."

Now he's getting drops twice daily to reduce the pressure in the eye so it can heal better, and fingers crossed he won't lose vision in the eye!