Happy Birthday Kwik!

Today is the big guy's birthday! Happy 10th birthday Kwik! Unfortunately I'm hitting the road early today so I can get to Nashville at a decent hour for Easter weekend festivities and won't make it out to the barn. That's okay, we'll celebrate big time when I get home on Monday ;-)

Kwik certainly seems glad to be back to work, and he's definitely feeling his oats. Our ride on Wednesday started off fine- we walked and walked- circles, serpentines, leg yields. He felt good and was starting to really move out. I asked for a little trot, and he started up with his porpoise rodeo bucking routine. Unfortunately I couldn't stick out this one either, and I'm still q-tipping sand out of my ears. Other than some mean looking bruises, I'm a-OK, but I really wish I knew what the %$%& these little outbursts are all about. Is he just super fresh? Ill-fitting tack? Just being a jerk? Something I'm doing? I really don't think it's a tack thing since he carries on in the round pen sometimes like this sans tack. I don't really think he's trying to be a jerk either, but who knows. Either way, we're going to take a slight detour on our recovery plan and focus on ground work until I can hook up with Ann for a lesson or training ride. I didn't want to do a whole lot of lunging/round pen work until he was comfortably working under saddle again, but I'm starting to become a little wary, and the ground work will only benefit us when we are back under saddle. He's been on SmartCalm for a month and a half, but I bumped him up to SmartCalm Ultra for his April shipment, so hopefully that will help take the edge off until we can get back to where we were riding-wise. He rarely does this when he's in consistent work, so if we can get there, I'll bet we won't have this problem.

I'm trying to think rationally about this instead of, "OMG, I've got this horse that I can't handle, and I should just sell him and get a schoolmaster since I'm a terrible rider and have no business with this horse!" No. No. No. We're going to focus on ground work, schedule some lessons and training rides, and see where that gets us. No freaking out. Not yet, anyway.

On a more exciting note, this weekend is the inaugural SEC Equestrian Championship! Ann went down to Auburn to head up ground control for the event, so it should run like clockwork. I would have loved to go cheer on UGA, but alas, I will be out of town. Hopefully the championship will be held in Athens sometime soon. Go Dawgs!