If you've read my minor bitching on IG, you might have noticed that I have a piss monster for a pony right now.  Every ride over the last two weeks or so has included some sort of acrobatics, normally with an Archie head aiming at my face.

I love it.  Really.  Because it means I'm in the saddle, right?

Not the most dramatic flail, but the only one with evidence.

Like anyone else, I run through the mental list of Shit That Could Be Wrong:

• I have hulked him out too much for our saddle.  Now his back is breaking.
• I've broken him and he's in pain and it's because I somehow did too much too soon.
• Something's wrong in his legs.
• Or his shoulder.
• Or his back.
• Or his fucking brain.
• Taking him off the regular SmartFlex Senior and putting him on the herb-free was the worse decision ever, because his joints were only being held together with my spit and Demon's Claw or Dragon's Claw or the brain stem fluid of a goat in eastern Maine, or whatever the fuck is actually in our SmartPaks.
• I'm not fit enough to keep up with his fitness (which might be the truest statement of my life).
• My aids have dissolved and when I think I'm trying to keep him from bulging right, I'm actually very politely asking him to crow hop on his front end a few times and bring his potentially-nose-smashing head ever closer to my face.  The intermittent bucks are just a bonus.
• His chronic back-soreness has returned with a vengeance and he really misses his meh-chiro.  And the vet.  It's been too, too long since his regular bi-weekly vet visits.
• He's completely done with me and circles, thanks.

Relaxed jerkface.

I had this whole post written out about how awesome last weekend was (the beach, shopping, more shopping, alcohol, pony), but now that it's this weekend, I feel like I missed that opportunity.  Whoops.

These are my pale thighs on the beach.  Surprisingly no tattoos in this image.

So here's where we are.  Three day weekend.  I'm hoping for lots of pony time, starting this afternoon.  We'll be on our second of three sets of twelve-minutes of trotting, which is ridiculously close to canter work.  In quick succession, I've had one barnmate treat me like I had lost my mind for taking so long to work him up.  And another barnmate just fucking got it.  Probably because she moved across the country to feed her horse better grass.  (for real)

This grass.

I've turned down a tentative opportunity to take Archie to the beach.  It's one of those things that would be great if it actually happens, but I don't know that it will.  I just don't feel like he's ready for that much work on hard sand.  Meh.

In other news, C is moving in a couple months.  First, it was one city and I had a lot of help getting her set up with good contacts (thank you!).  Then she came to me and said that her orders had changed and she's moving to my hometown.  I put her in contact with my old barn manager, for whom I worked, and now she'll be moving to that barn and feeding.  I feel like, thanks to my personal connections and the existence of nice people in the blogger world, she could have told me any city in the US and maybe Canada and I could have given her at least one reference.

Okay.  Prepare yourselves.  (need facebook access for this)

3.  Color options:

There is a big, giant, yawning chasm of me that wants to take Archie out and immediately go do fun things.  Like cantering.  And jumps.  And cantering jumps.  But I rein the joy-chaser in and we continue our timed trot sets.

It's a beautiful place for walking.

From the fun little abscess experience, he had two weeks off.  He's been back under saddle for a week and I've officially started him back at four two-minute trot sets, but with only two minutes' recovery.  I thought about this long and hard.  I knew I couldn't start where we left off because he spent two weeks napping.  I also knew it wouldn't kill him if we did.  But I just couldn't.

The dip in the center is where I offered him some water and the spike at the end is where I tried to outrun bugs.

The plan from here:  we had been a day away from moving into four four-minute trot sets.  From there, I was going to scale back the trot work (maybe two five-minute sets?) and reintroduce canter work.  A month after cantering, I was going to introduce jumping.

Sweaty after yesterday's ride.

So now, we're going to roughly replicate the last three weeks.  I hope to have him cantering in the beginning of June and jumping by July.

Lots of exciting stuff around here.  Or not.  Stuff around here.

D went out of town for about 36 hours this past weekend.  Now he's in love with the city of Boston.  During that time, I stayed mad busy.  Washing our cars, mowing the entire lawn (it's a third an acre), cleaning, cleaning, cleaning.  Walking the girls and playing with the still-gimpy pony.

We will not look at you and this will be the best you can do.

Just started and already offended.

I had a nightmare about his hoof falling off on Sunday.  I was back at the barn in Augusta, where I'd worked, and had just brought all the horses in during a thunderstorm.  I went to check on him and his hoof was falling off in clumps.  In my dream, I remember pulling him out of his stall to show him to the barn manager.  So even though I traditionally take Monday off, I had to see him.

You may be asking yourself (legitimately, because I ask myself this shit sometimes, too):  if the ponykins is off, why are you still riding him?  It's because the "off" hasn't be replicated on the lunge or in hand.  With my tub off his back, he's asymptomatic.  And then there's the question of "herbs".  I recently switched Archie from the SmartFlex Senior that he's been on since 2010 to the version without herbs.  Would he be less ouchie with the herbs?

Fortunately, his soundness improves every day.  We did a short 25 minute ride with some trotting and he powerhoused through the laps with no hitch and felt pretty good on the grass.