Day 5 with Ceasar

Well, I hadn't intended to really work him very hard today because he has a chiropractor appt. tomorrow. However, I had him move around the pen and it only took a few minutes and he caught me. I decided to put the saddle on him right away. He stood good for it, then when I moved him off he bucked and I made him move. He settled down with the bucking after a few minutes but I kept him moving. He only has two gears, trot and canter so that is what he did. We did lots of transitions: directional changes and such. I went through all his exercises then when he settled down a bit I did some flexion exercises with him. By this time he was doing some huffing and puffing. But he was standing next to me. I decided to mount him and he did fine. We even took some steps in each direction and then bent him to a stop. He swished his tail a little, but didn't offer to buck. I got off and worked him some more from the ground and he wanted to buck a time or two but not much. I then got back on him and moved all over and got a few more steps out of him. We wound up the session with more of the disengaging, moving shoulders and sending exercises. I ended with him flexing on both sides. It will be interesting to know what we find out from the Chiropractor tomorrow.
So today was a better ride, the second one. I was on his back last week. I can tell though that he has some fight left in him. I know that is the wrong terminology because I don't to look at this as a fight where someone wins and someone loses. I want to work with him using 'feel' to help him through these issues to help him be a better and safer horse to be around and to ride.
We will work on it.
By the way I also got the chance to ride both of my horses today. Which is unusual. I really want Raven to be 'magical' in our connection and feel with each other. So we are working all week on this. And Jake has to get better with spooky things. So we worked on that today. Ceasar does better than he does in this area.
It was a good day with all the horses.
'til next time.