Still here!

Wow, I had no intention of not blogging for this long.

Life totally got in the way. With the sunlight long days, I find my time at my desk after hours to be quite minimal.

No worries, Laz has been getting the equal amount of love and attention.

A couple weeks ago we had a nice lesson.

I wanted to work on our riding, out in the big pasture where he can get a bit silly and worried.

Of course, the evening (our lesson was at 7pm which was awesome) of our lesson he was 100% chill. Just a total gentleman.

Great for the ride, but it's hard to work on 'issues' when none arise ;)

Am I complaining? Not really

From time to time, I do mount up from the ground.

I do this probably 5 times a year, I want him to be cool about it for obvious reasons.

It's the classic, hop/hop/hop/groan and mount approach. It's very graceful.

Other than that, I use our two stack of crates to spare his back

I pre warmed him up in our main paddock/pasture

Yay for Spring!

Before heading into the larger pasture once my trainer arrived

 And worked down and all around the large pasture

 We worked on connection at the walk

 At the trot

 and having Laz respond to my body/leg/seat vs rein

 I rode him in my bitless. 

He's been yanking his head over being a bit defiant when I ask with my hands, so we are working on softening him again and not dictate direction. 

 I am working on using my body first, hands last..bad habit!

 Softening

 I adore my long rope reins, love the length and the heavy weight

 Laz got a lot of praises and rests for his efforts

 

 

We ended with some canter work and transitions

I have a bad habit of over riding him to bring up his energy and she reminded me to allow him to maintain his gait without me having to 'canter pump him'

Such a good boy

On one of our mid day work week walks. So shiny, and this was before his spring bath!

Happy ponies!

 Text pictures like this from my BO are awesome on days I don't get to see Laz.
What lucky ponies!

Laz also got trimmed this past week. He grew a ton in his fronts, but per usual not as much in hinds.

He was getting a bit sore right prior to his trim, and felt better after trim but I just feel his back is NQR. He is DUE for an adjustment, and our chiro isn't coming until the end of June...ugh.

His LF had slight swelling after our lesson...or was it after these shenanigans?

Either way, I gave him a week off of riding (we still took walks, etc) to see if it's better.
It is, but still slight swelling. I worry about the diagonal leg to his RH causing lameness, and in general any body deterioration due to his years of compromise.
He also came off the track with a huge old injury scar on his LF heel bulb so I often wonder if it doesn't flare up as an injury from time to time.
I rub surpass on it, and try not to panic

This is what Husbands do when they see 'another' horsie type box in the mail...they make it known, they know another horse item arrived ;)

Road riding

The weather has been tremendous, low to mid 70's and breezy and sunny.

No bugs yet 

Laz and I have been riding, or road walking quite a bit as his feet just did a major growth spurt in the last couple of weeks, I'm trying to do a trim a la natural until my trimmer comes next week.

The two OTTB's have also been recently started up on full grass an hour a day (evening), but are snacking on small nubs in their field ALL day.

With all that grassy sugar, I am watching him closely and making sure he's burning some calories

My own version of Run Henny Run, aka Go Henny Go-in video clip below (you may want to turn volume down...I have a loud voice!)

Laz's fur shedding has slowed down and his summer coat is peaking through on his neck/chest and manly shoulders

Here he is waiting for me outside of tack room

My Breyer horse

 Riding around one of his pasture fields before heading out

Road riding. 

Pito screams for him when we leave but Laz does a great job focusing on us (for the most part--coming home I opted to do a victory canter in the field heading back to the barn and Pito took off running alongside and Laz squeeealed and bucked the most gentle "I'm trying not to go crazy" buck)

 On our walk, I heard a splish splashing...

 Ooops. Mason (who turned 10 yrs old) decided to go for a swimroll

Fatty!

Content Laz and Pito to have him back

It was warm and early enough in the day, that I decided to hose him off.

I still haven't been able to get enough time on the right warm day, early enough to give him his first Spring bath..counting the days down.

Oh, and must clean the stinky man pocket aka sheath.

:/