Uncle

 Ugh... today is just not my day. I'm crying Uncle. And actually crying. Sigh... 

I don't like being depressed. I realize it's stupid and there are so many things to be grateful for, but... today I can't really muster it up. I am grateful, but... I'm also sad. And there's a lot of things I'm sad about. Aubrey is doing a clinic at Ashland today. Which would have been great to take Lyric to. But, I can't get her in the trailer. And I'm still blue about Dan. 

So anyways... I opted to go ride Lyric. I groomed her at the trailer and gave her hay there. Then we walked up to the arena and I got on. She was okay at the walk. We worked on our straightness and halts and go. The halts still suck. Today seemed like it took a whole lot of pulling to get her to stop and even then, she wasn't ever completely stopping. Just slowing long enough and then moving off. So finally we trotted. And holy heck! She was on red bull! It was a running trot. She even broke into the canter on her own. And it wasn't a fun fast trot. It was an unbalanced wild trot. So I tried a few times to get her to slow down and balance. And we would get a few strides, but... then she'd go back to racing around. So I decided to just get off. I figured there was no point in reinforcing that and we were just strengthening dysfunction. I have no idea why she was all riled up. So ride 16 was a quick one. I lunged her and she actually softened and dropped her head and was lunging quite nicely. Weird! Oh well. She was still power trotting and was basically trotting on her own. And I couldn't get her to walk for a good bit. But she was at least softer in her topline and reaching down. So we did that both ways. Then I just... untacked her and turned her out. I did a few minutes with Dan in the arena and then I went back to catch her. Because... trailer loading!

I took her to the trailer and just put a pan of feed on the top of the ramp and didn't ask anything. It was up to her. She marched right up and ate. So after a few minutes, I moved it a little farther in the trailer. We continued this way until she had eaten lunch. She spent most of the time with both front feet in the trailer adn the two hinds on the ramp, but we did manage to get the back feet in the trailer some. Towards the end she got a little worried and backed off. I allowed it. And then let her decide if she wanted the rest of her food. She didn't... not enough to go all the way in again. So I compromised and let her finish the last bit at the top of the ramp. My theory is that by taking away the pressure... she'll relax and then once she's comfortably eating in there, we can progress. So we shall see. But.. progress, I guess.



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