Scooby 4/18

Well, the Bute made a HUGE difference! Scooby can bend left now!!!! YEA!!!! If anything, he now has trouble bending and tracking to the right, but that felt like a teeth issue and not a back/hock issue. The locking was often in the jaw vs the whole body. Once he was tired, I could feel the change and he was showing resistance in the hind to the right, coming from the hock. But, he was able to bend left easily and relaxed the whole time--something he couldn't even approach doing before!

He also was less "stuck" in the huge extended trot and was able to transition into a trot with less vigorous "jump" and more collection. For the first time, he was not coming up off the vertical so violently in his transitions, and by the end he was actually transitioning pretty softly in his poll (as long as I gave him a big release from pressure as a positive reward for going forward). We worked on LOTS of serpentines and trotting while changing direction. While he was fresh, he was excellent, perfect, soft, responsive! But I could feel the hock begin to break down underneath me as the session went on, and his framework and tension built. I was very careful in working through it, asking him to "just try" and the moment he did, I would lessen my seat, rein, and sometimes let him walk as well if he showed lots of effort. We did lots of transition work and worked with learning the "gaits within gaits", learning how to support himself a little more on his hind and generally re-learning his trot gait, as I could feel he's been compensating for a while and has to un-learn that way of going.

He's still in pain and will need further therapy to get him fully sound, but overall he is responding well and showing improvement! He leg yields were soft, relaxed, and excellent. He even tried to give me a trot shoulder-in! The only thing I really had to get on him about was his lack of paying attention to my seat in walk-halt transitions. His ears would telegraph that he'd gotten the cue, and he'd half-halt, but he would continue to saunter along and not actually stop until I really used the reins to get his attention.

I did a couple quick canter circles at the end, but he was already spent and bunny-hopped in his canter in both directions. He tried to relax down and round in the canter, but just didn't have enough support in the hind to do it.

I also had not lunged him before riding the past couple rides and will return to lunging him to warm up his topline first the next time he's ridden, as I expect his canterwork will improve with lunging first.