I really need to do my biology homework and get to sleep (I think I am one of the youngest people on blogspot) BUTTTT I just want to update. I rode Cruizer yesterday for the first time in what seems like forever (probably has been a month or two). No one was there to ride with me however, so I decided to just free lunge him for awhile and see if anyone showed up. He was CRAZY. He cantered around at top speed, jumped the trail bridge 8000 times, jumped invisible objects, bucked, changed leads, spun, reared, etc. for a good 15 minutes without stopping. I actually started telling him to easy and whoa because I was worried he was gonna get hurt. Finally he stopped running and instead just roamed around the arena searching for bits of hay. At that point one of my favorite boarders showed up and said her husband was going to ride that night if he could get someone else to ride with him. I told her I would, and went to tack Cruizer up. I rode him in the shank western bit-just a tomthumb type mouth piece with a copper roller (he LOVES copper rollers), andddd the big western saddle. I figured I might need some extra security and control, and better safe than sorry right? I then lunged him for about 35 minutes. The whole time he was lunging he had his head between his knees and the ground, stretching all the way down and licking and chewing a lot. Normally this would be call for not much lunging, but I have seen him do that many times for 30 minutes straight and then all of a sudden remember he's 5 and take off bucking, so we kept lunging. He never did liven up. I even shuffled my feet at him.

For the actual ride he was awesome.. just REALLY lazy. & He was already puffing after 5 minutes of long trot. (He never really breathes hard during a ride, not even after cantering for 15 minutes straight and doing lead changes. he just sweats). I actually had to squeeze him every stride at the jog to keep him just in that minimal speed. He had his head too low as well the whole time and would not pick it up. He had his nose at about knee level no matter what I did. Oh well.. not gonna argue with him at this point. I decided to canter him a little bit just to see how he felt, and he was perfectly sound...although he did more up & down than forward. He REALLY wanted to buck and play, but held it together somehow. He received lotsss of praising for this.

Tonight I lunged him for awhile and he was a lot more keyed up than yesterday, which is normal for him. Generally coming off of a break he's an angel the first day and then the second day he realizes he's 5 and has had time off. He never really completely settled down, but definitely got better. I only rode him for about 20 minutes today because he started getting worried and playing with the copper roller a lot. All we really did was jog around, work on whoa, and walk.. which is fine with me. I don't like pushing the show horse thing with him during the winter, or with myself! I would rather just ride around, act silly, and have fun.

I also will mention that we are now about 4+ months out from a trim, and he's still too short to trim. WTH. New farrier says he won't be able to trim him for awhile. Sigh. He is sound though, and his new hoof coming in is pretttyyy.