Insomnia makes for late night updates

My husband has been in Maine since Tuesday morning. Guess who hasn't gotten any decent sleep since then? I'm wide awake at the moment, I know I need to sleep but my body isn't cooperating. I don't begrudge Neil his vacation, but I do look forward to his return home tomorrow.... or should I say later today. Heh.

UK has pretty much settled in at the new barn. He's got all sorts of new girlfriends and hates being parted from them. I think I'm going to have to do something about that soon, as his screaming for them while I try to brush him is getting old.

He's also done with the doxy, thank goodness. Wednesday was his last dose of the yellow stuff, which is good as the coffee grinder was about to bite the big one.

His energy level is still recovering, but otherwise he's starting to get back to normal. Each time I ride him he gets just a little bit better, and that's all I ask for. We've pretty much stuck to the ring, as I wanted to get his confidence back before we tried anything new. This approach seems to be working, as we finally made it down the driveway bareback last week without rearing. He struggled and we doubled back a few times but in the end we made it all the way. I'm hand walking him everywhere too, forcing him to go new places constantly.

Undersaddle he's been pretty excellent. Like I said before, he doesn't have much energy but while he has some we make the most of it. The ring at the new barn is much larger then the one at Betsy's, which is nice as we can really work on going straight at the canter now. He tends to be less balanced when tracking right, so we've been doing a lot of work that way, just trying to keep him even. It's starting to pay off!

Before I get on him we play with a couple of the jumps in the ring. UK didn't want to jump some barrels so I started walking over them and making him follow me. We do the same thing with the big round plastic brush jump. Now he'll pop over them from a standstill without a second thought.

UK viewing the barrels we just jumped.

Thursday all that prep work paid off, as UK jumped the barrels undersaddle from the trot, twice. We trotted up to them and he stopped the first time, got smacked on the butt and then we tried again. He almost chickened out again, but then sucked it up and made a huge effort and jumped them like they were four feet high. I was prepared for this, and stayed with him no problem. Huge praise was given and I let him walk for a couple of minutes before trying again. The second time was much smoother, he still slowed down and jumped big but with less hesitation. More praise was given.

Those two big efforts wiped him out of energy so completely that he wasn't able to trot a crossrail afterwards without knocking it over. Because of that I was nice and gave him yesterday off to recover. 

I rode him tonight... I mean last night, and planned on just letting him hack around and chill. Somebody had moved everything in the ring to practice for a trail class so we played around the obstacles. One of them was a small wooden bridge that someone had put the flower boxes on it's sides to form rails. I figured UK would be terrified of this. He really wasn't. A bit cautious but he followed me right over and even walked over it with very little urging once I was on him. 

The mailbox however was terrifying and he seriously considered fleeing when I stopped him next to it and opened it from his back. Maybe he thought there was a tarp hidden inside it? Hehe! 

I pretty much rode him on the buckle the entire time, letting him have a break from all the bending and flexing we normally do. He cracks me up, as he can be so balanced on the left lead that he'll be cantering with his nose touching the ground, hind end engaged and going straight all at once and with no urging from me. Can't do that on the right lead as well yet, but we'll get there.

Because he was so good I took him for a hand walk in the woods to find the field out back where Sally said there was jumps. UK ranged from being excited and wanting to explore to leaning on me because he was nervous. Silly horse needs to make up his mind! He had no problem climbing over the small stone wall or a few fallen branches. Good to know.

Tomorrow... um, I mean later today I'm going to possibly try to go trail riding again. I'm really hoping he'll be ok just to go for a nice long walk. I'm sick of being in the ring and I know once he gets over his fear he'll love being on the trails!

So cross your fingers, knock on wood and say a prayer that UK decides to be brave and good for me!