Ride 92 - Perspective - How green is my horse?

 Sorry for the double post.  It was supposed to rain all day today so I wasn't expecting to ride, but it was actually really nice outside so I did.  :)  Here are the ride stats.

Chrome was very excited and spooky because it was really windy.  He was really balky when passing other horses, swinging his neck back and forth to gawk.  That is so annoying.  I popped him with my reins and he paid attention better after that.  The crazy thing is I got my whip out yesterday and then completely forgot to carry it today.  It would have come in handy!

There really isn't much to say except that we cantered... by accident... because he spooked and bolted.  It was our biggest spook yet.  Hubby was riding his bike behind us, but I don't think that's what spooked him.  He shot forward, bouncing for several strides and then just smoothly kept on cantering.  It scared the snot out of me at first, but then the canter was actually really nice.  I stopped him and got ridiculed by hubby for squealing like a big chicken lol.

Other than that he was fine.  Just looky and balky.  Green horses can be so annoying sometimes.  I miss my lazy, summertime dead head hehe.

I actually got to thinking last night about how green he still is and I thought of something that put it all into perspective.  I was updating his riding diary page and counted how many hours I've actually been on his back.  I know this is ride 92, but some of those rides were only ten or fifteen minutes long, so I wasn't sure how many hours of riding time we actually had.  There were a few rides where I forgot to keep track of the time, but for all of the ones I did have it only totaled up to 47 hours (including today-also I rounded up and down, so not exact).... 47 hours is barely more than a horse would get for 60 days of training!!!

If a horse is sent off for 60 days of training, five days a week for one hour sessions that's forty hours.  That all actual work and consecutive too.  Some of Chrome rides have been posing for pictures or just piddling around, not actual work.  So if I look at it that way (especially since his 47 hours are spread across a couple of years) he is actually still very green!!  So it puts all of his behavior into perspective for me.  I'm so glad I've tracked our rides as well as I have.  It really helps to be able to go back and look at what we've done.  :)

Just since the beginning of November we've done 13.5 hours.  I'm going to try to stay as consistent as possible riding this winter so that by spring we can get to some serious work and hopefully he won't be so green anymore.  I hope!  Also since February 2013 when we moved here he has only spent 21.5 hours on the road.  The rest has been in the yard or pasture.  So my verdict is he just needs lots more miles!

I also want to mention one more thing just for my records.  When we got home I asked him to trot up the driveway and I'm pretty sure either his stifle locked or gave out.  I couldn't tell for sure which one it was.  I got off, untacked and walked him around.  The left stifle was catching every stride, but he worked out of it.  Hubby said he looked sore or tired on both stifles.  When I first started the ride he was walking funky on his left front too, it almost felt like his breakover was too long and his shoulder dropped or something, kind of like how they walk when going down a steep hill.  Hard to explain, but I'll be keeping an eye on it.  He worked out of that too.  His toes are a bit long so I'm going to give him a few days off to rest his stifles and I'll rasp down his toes to help with breakover.  I've been riding him a lot so he may just need a break.  I'll keep everyone updated.