Holy mackerel, it’s been almost 4 months since I last posted on Krystal!! She’s doing super!!
Krystal had some time off during our trip to Sport Horse Nationals in September and during combining season in October. I’ve been working her pretty much 4-5 days/wk since then. I started really slow, just doing 10-15 minutes of ground work the first few sessions. Confidence is her weakest point. Her fear is mainly from her own body, most likely from that first girthing, whether it be saddling or a surcingle, and her reaction is to tighten up, which naturally scares her more. The ground work helps so much and is much safer for me. I am to the point where I can push her to respond faster, she canters without tightening up and stopping herself from bucking and this week I can get her to canter from the walk and turn and canter off the other way. She isn’t quite soft enough to do a rollback yet but it’s coming.
Have been working her over a “pinwheel” of 4 ground poles. It’s been helping lots. It helps distract her from her internal fears as she also has to pay attention to her feet or she trips on the poles. For a couple weeks I would ride and if she got too worried about something I would go around the pinwheel a few times and she would relax and soften and off we would go to the easier work of going around the arena w/o the poles.
The week before last I started cantering her again and yesterday I cantered down the long side & around the arena, several rounds in each direction! She’s getting more comfortable with all the work. I’ve been doing some “clockwork”, putting her front foot in a specific direction using only one rein. The first few days backing was pretty touchy, she was a bit “bound up” and I had to be careful to let her sort it out and relax and back. After a couple days she was backing freely and now I can add some energy to get her to back faster and she stills stays soft. Backing is a tricky thing with horses who have a bucking problem. They can get bound up and explode as they don’t know what to do with the energy and it’s blocked. They’re locked in their body and their brain. Fear can do some really dangerous things to horses and consequently, us. I also found in the ground work that Krystal thought it was totally wrong to side pass over a pole. The front and back of the horse must be on the same side of the pole in her world 
She found out that wasn’t true and now I’m starting to add some speed to her side passing on the ground. Last week we started the side pass under saddle and once she figured it out she thought it was fine.
When I started back in on Krystal after combining she had put on lots of weight. Turns out the western saddle didn’t fit her. Put on George’s L&R Ellipse. That worked for about 3 wks. She’s getting more fit so now she’s in Rick’s L&R Ellipse he has for Chivonne. Cordia figures Krystal will go through all of my saddles by the end of summer with her changing back as she gets in shape and stronger. We’re hoping she ends up in Safarr’s old L&R Berkley since he outgrew that after 5 years and had to get a new one. That’s the downside of getting the horse’s backs to get stronger all the time. Always changing/getting stronger!
I’m still very careful not to push her too far. The wrong pressure at the wrong time could still have bad consequences BUT it’s getting farther away and would take a bigger stressor to have it come out. Krystal’s becoming more like a “trained horse” every day!
(OK I’m trying to get this to post to FB today, let’s see if it works this time)
