I was looking forward to a nice relaxing ride. You know kind of care free, even though we have work to do. Nothing too serious, just running through the exercises, not taking anything too seriously.

I finally got my neck stretcher that I ordered forever ago. I didn’t really want to throw a new gadget on right before an event. But I didn’t see it having too negative of an effect. It basically does the same thing as the De Gauge, just in a different way. I even thought a softer way.

When I first put it on Frankie I was surprised that he immediately had his head down. It wasn’t super tight so I left it as is.

To the indoor we went. The warm up started good. He was a little less forward than usual, but listening pretty good. Then he turned into a bastard.

Head straight in the air, trying to look out the doors. Nothing was going on except the pastures were getting cleaned, which isn’t anything that would normally make Frankie interested. So, some fighting and then Frankie started resisting everything I was asking.

I got annoyed. His head was straight up in the air, he was completely hollow, inverted, ugly.

I got off and tightened the neck stretcher in hopes that maybe he would give to it.

I got back on and he started calming down and giving in a bit. Then he started spooking. Not a genuine spook. An excuse to not work and be distracted spook. Over and over and over again. I was not in the mood for this game.

I tightened the neck stretcher a little more so he couldn’t have his head straight in the air. It worked, but he was totally tense and still attempting to spook. I caught him every time before he would with a firm, angry “hey” or “pay attention to ME!”.

He calmed down a bit after he realized I was getting seriously angry.

Then we started going through the test. Trotting down the center line he was a dream, through the corner and the first circle…perfect. The second circle getting a little tense and right before the canter transition he would throw his head up into the air, hollow out, and go up and down. Grrr.

So, we worked on the canter transition to the left, trot to canter. Finally, he was good.

So we could get through that part. Canter circle, lengthening (icky), across the diagonal, trot transition at X, stretching trot circle (perfect), canter transition good, canter circle lengthening (not half bad), trot transition – head straight in the air tense and haunches in the center of the ring. Grr.

After working on the canter to trot transition, then the trot to walk transition without him throwing his head into the air, leaping, hopping, throwing his haunches in, I decided to get off and loosen the neck stretcher.

Then I re-warmed up. He was 20% better, with equates to not very good but not terrible.

To the test again. We ran through it two or three more times. None were great or even good. But none were terrible and he wasn’t throwing his head up and doing the things he was doing.

I don’t think the neck stretcher is what caused his behavior, but I do think if I would have had the De Gauge it wouldn’t have gotten as bad.

No more neck stretcher, at least until we are done with events.

I wasn’t going to ride him tomorrow since we are leaving in the afternoon for a 2+ hour trip. But now I think I have to.

Lets hope it was just a bad day.

Ride time: 1 1/2 hours