Increasing Difficulty!

So, Sunday came around and my Stepdad (Philsey) suggested hiring an arena down the road and taking both Herbie and his eventer Tilley to do some jumping. I jumped at the chance to ride in a bigger arena than the one at our livery yard. This gave me the chance to help Philsey with his jumping as Tilley can get rather keen and also lunge Herbie with the Side Saddle on him. I wanted to give him the chance to get used to trotting and cantering with it on before I add in my weight on top of it! 

Herb was, of course, absolutely fine with the Saddle on. I even lunged him over a 2ft upright and he jumped nicely, although I think I need to work on Herbie's jumping from Canter as its when he jumps from trot that he can jump you off very easily! He has done it to a few people now! 

When I got on him I decided to just stick to walking around doing circles and figures of eights to get used to the movement and improving on my posture and balance! I've found that wearing my lower back support has helped greatly, it just gives me a bit of a reminder about sitting up and not slouching! I am feeling that I would greatly improve from a lunge lesson, so I might ask my Mom or Stepdad to lunge Herbie with me on soon... I've not had a lunge lesson since December 2012 out in Adelaide when I was training with Double Olympic Gold Medalist, Gill Rolton ('92 and '96 I believe...) and jeez were those lessons hard work but SO rewarding. 

But as seems to be the case, when something is going well there is always someone or something ready to rain on your parade and Herbie definitely got rained on! 

I lead him back down to the lorry and only once walking on hard ground again he was lame, and I mean LAME! He would barely put any weight on his near hind foot. He had pulled one nail out of the shoe a few weeks previously so we immediately thought he had something stuck between the shoe and his hoof. Luckily they were being shod again on Monday so we called over the lady who's arena we were hiring to see if she had any tools and thank god Tanya and her lovely husband got Herbie's shoe off. Was there any heat? No. Nada. Zilch! So back to the drawing board. We were all feeling his legs and his back trying to figure out what was wrong with him and it wasn't until we were standing behind him, scratching our heads we realised what was wrong. His pelvis is out! There is what looks like a good 4 inches difference in height of his points of hip. Poor Herb! I felt awful! I couldn't believe I didn't notice! My friends have since pointed out that Herb isn't exactly the most normal moving horse in the world so it would be hard to notice in his gaits. (FYI, I still feel bad now!) 

My parents have hopefully spoken to our Physio today as we want them to come out to sort Herb ASAP. Herbie has a very busy calendar for the next two weeks. He is meant to be a Nanny Horse for my friend Tara and her horse Charm at the Atherstone Hunt Hunter Trial, where we are doing the 75cm pairs class and then Thursday 23rd we are planning on going Autumn Hunting. We are doing all of these Astride though! I am no where near fit enough for Aside Hunting yet!! 

73 days to go! 

Lets do this! 

LNC. xo