mouth issue update/jump chute

Lucy seems to have enjoyed her time off. I've been doing a lot of ground work with her so that she's not just sitting around, and tonight we tried a jump chute! She did great!

Thanks for all the helpful suggestions and ideas regarding her mouth issue. I looked in her mouth (the best I could) and didn't see anything abnormal. She's not sensitive to her cheeks being poked or prodded, even behind the eyes as BeBe suggested. I got brave and tried pushing on her gums and didn't feel any bumps or get any kind of reaction from her, so I don't think it's a wolf teeth issue.

She just turned six and had her teeth floated in November, and it was a very routine, straightforward float. The dentist didn't find any abnormalities, but she is floated every six months on a schedule to keep up with the changes in her mouth, so she tends to be pretty easy to maintain.

I am going to ride her tomorrow and hopefully she will be ok! If not, the dentist will come out early next week to investigate.

Here's some video from tonight:

pile of poles

After not seeing her since Wednesday, I went to the barn after work yesterday all excited to see Lucy and ride. Unfortunately no one else was around, so I had to keep it to ground work and a bit of lunging.

After Lucy had warmed up properly in the indoor, I set up some poles to lunge her over. She did great. It took a few times through for her to figure out that she didn't have to do anything special with her feet except trot through them. She tried to adjust her stride at first, and ended up stepping on the poles. Once she relaxed and went through normally, she was fine, because I had already spaced the poles out to match her stride.

She went through at the trot and canter and seemed quite chill about the whole idea, so I decided to set up the teenciest of crossrails for her. Of course that meant I had to set up a jump chute, so I spent 20 minutes lugging standards and poles across the arena, much to Lucy's entertainment. She kind of just stood there and watched me, probably wondering what on earth I was doing!

The crossrail that I set up was literally less than 6" off the ground, but Lucy was quite unsure about it. I led her over both directions. She'd walk up to it beside me and stop just before stepping over it. She'd look at the poles, then look up at me, then look at the poles again, like, "so do I really need to step over this thing?" but then she'd proceed over the poles and immediately come back to me for lots of pats and happy sing-song-voice praise.

I asked her to trot over the x-rail twice, and then she cantered over it once in each direction, and then we were done! I was expecting a giant leap over the "jump" at the canter, but she didn't seem concerned at all, and it was really nothing more than a normal canter stride. What a good horse.

Tonight Kenny is coming with me to the barn, and I think there will be a bunch of other people there because Tuesday is usually quite busy there for some reason. I am hoping to have a couple of really nice canters and maybe get some on video if Kenny is feeling cooperative ;)

Edit-we'll go to the barn another time. It is just way too cold tonight!