Improvement!

I was away in the weekend (finished the final course of my instructor certification, yeah!!), so had M and J take care of him while I was gone.

Saturday M got up early and turned him out with a buddy before her lessons. Later in the day I had booked a massage session for him. the report back was that the soreness in his back was completely gone (yipee :D ), and that the unevenness in size in his back muscles was only a problem for saddle fit. The texture of the muscles was the same on both sides, so there was no crookedness with him being more stiff or tense in one side. A slight tenseness in the upper shoulder muscles, a natural conscequence of his head carriage, long and low work and feeding him on the ground should help loosen that up a bit, and give him more freedom in his foreleg movement (want lots of that for our extensions!!). In the evening one of the other boarders free-jumped her horse, and M asked if Barokko could play, too. He overjumped a bit on the first couple of jumps, but after that settled into a rhythm, and had a good time :)

Sunday was J's turn. She started in the indoor to feel his gaits without a saddle, but it quickly got boring, since I don't want anyone else riding dressage on him ;) So off to the woods instead, and they had a really good ride with lots of speed and exciting encounters with noisy Icelandic ponies, deer, bicyclists and other natural obstacles. She only almost slipped off him once :D

So yeaterday I was back, and excited to ride him again. There was a marked improvement in his movement since last week, he was cooperative, very stable on the bit, nicely forward, and even bucked once (I thought his canter was hard to sit bareback, that little buck almost did it in for me hehe). We worked a bit on lengthenings, which was really cool to try bareback, I could really feel how his front legs came up and out, and the push from behind.

This bareback stuff is actually really good, I'm getting awesome feedback on the work we're doing because I can feel every muscle tension, every lift or hollowing of the back etc. Not that I'm not looking forward to getting a saddle that works for him, but I should keep doing this every now and then, serious workouts, not just the little for fun sessions I've done before.