A little bit of Daredevil

Guess who's sound again!!

Carlos spent most of the fall and all of the winter unclipped, in the field, abscessing on the same foot non-stop. He has just now remained sound for the last few weeks, and fingers crossed it keeps up. I missed my boy!

My actual last time riding him was during last semester. I was supposed to ride Mark, but then Mark was lame. So I grabbed Carlos to see if he was lame still and . . . yeah, very lame. My last time riding him seriously was when he finally managed to actually bite me. That was two years ago. I still have a scar. Contrary to my bitter sophomore ramblings, I do love this asshole of a horse, and I'm glad he's finally back in work. He's taking it like a champ, weird head twisting and all.

Now that Regionals has passed, things have mostly settled down. It seems like Coach is keen on my lesson group jumping again; the last two lessons have included a grid of some kind. When I was allowed to pick Carlos this week, I genuinely thought we wouldn't jump at all considering that he's already bold to fences and coming back into work. Ha, I was wrong.

Whee! Look at Donkey Ears go!

He hacked around very nicely, more consistent even than Lionel from a few weeks ago. We trot over some poles, did some circles, yadda yadda. He gave me his usual lovely transitions, and we had no complications what so ever. That changed drastically when we started doing the test, but whatever, gotta give my boy some credit. I'll talk about that in a separate post though because it was a thought provoking experience.

Our test was a little bit complex and took some maneuvering to get through. He was almost perfect both times through with the only major hiccup being the final fence. Carlos is odd in that he will definitely take you to the fence (whether you like it or not), but you have to keep a steady leg on the backside. His hunter/jumper lead change is coming together as he's mostly figuring it out by himself.

I'll probably geek out more in this month's vlog, but I really adore this horse, and I'm happy to see him in lessons again. After losing Mark, it's nice to have a bit of a positive moment at the barn.