Mustang Saga

Walking through the ditch - I love his expression.

We got to ride this evening! It was fun. The tarp was scary again, with me on his back. Not too bad though. The barrels were less scary but we only walked around them. Side-passing was pretty decent if we had a pole on the ground as a "crutch" to guide us, but not out in the open. My fault I'm sure. He was pretty mellow, almost dead-eyed when we got done. I think the vaccination this morning might have him feeling a little down. I know I felt like crap for a couple days after my tetanus shot, so I felt kind of bad for asking him to work, but we really didn't do anything hard, just puttered around the obstacles.

Just riding... He was kind of resistant to turning this direction today.

I also had him carry my bright yellow rain slicker and I put it on and took it off several times. He wasn't impressed. Yawn. We dragged a log, but only when I was on the ground. I fumble with the darn lariat and didn't want to get in a wreck. I need to stand around and coil and uncoil it repeatedly until I get the feel for it. We also rode up to the gate and side passed up next to it, but I couldn't reach the latch (it's in a corner) so we didn't open it. We need to get the gate hung on the round pen and I can work on it there. Darn it! I meant to do that today.

Earlier in the day I went to the chiropractor for the first time in years. My back, neck, and hips have been getting worse and worse, until last weekend I could barely turn my head. Turns out I have a bulging disc in my lower back, which should be fixable, and had some ribs out. I suspect the lower back problem wasn't helped by falling off Tonka, but I did have pain there before that. The rib problem started last week. I have no idea what I did to cause it. I have to go back 5 more times in the next 2-3 weeks. He did something to my elbow too, which will hopefully help with the tennis elbow. Actually, the way he described it, it works in the same way that pin-firing is supposed to work on horses. He described it as "turning on" the nerves. Kind of like you're bringing the body's attention to the fact that "hey, there's something wrong here!" so it can heal it. Busy day!