back in the saddle

Today was the day I wanted to see how the horses handled being ridden again. So I got Moon out and in the rd. pen, too much rain today. I went through my usual stretching with him then put the boots on him and took some time to see if he needed shims with the pad. I noticed the last time I rode him that he was sore in the withers too. Anyway I figured out where to put the shims and then saddled him. He did buck, which he never did before. I could be the position of the shims. I am going to try without them tomorrow and see what happens. Anyway, I moved him around and noticed he is really hard to flex. I noticed too that he was not the relaxed horse he had been. So I took my time did just as if he had never been ridden before. Then when I did swing my leg over he was fine. There was a little bit of a different kind of movement to him, but I still went through the flexing and YH and YF then a step or two and continued that til it was good on that side then went to the other side and did the same thing. Before I put him up I took the saddle off and tested his flexing and he was still real stiff on both sides. I massaged the muscles around his poll real good so that he had lowered his head almost to the floor, not because I was pushing down, but because he got so relaxed. Then I tried flexing him with the halter. He was still pretty stiff. I think that he is locked up in the poll somewhere that is preventing him from being able to flex softly. So Grand got the same kind of treatment. I went through his stretching, put the boots on and then worked on trying to shim the saddle pad. Amazingly, he stood with no problem at all. Once I got the shims where I think they should go I saddled him with no problem. I moved him off and he didn't offer to buck at all so I just moved him around going through a review of gw exercises. Then I put the bridle on and started getting on and off like I did with Moon. He seemed more relaxed than Moon was and I started the YH YF and step off, but he has really sticky feet so I gotta get his feet moving to really see how he is going to be. Tomorrow we will go through the process again and see if we can get a little farther along.