Jekyll and Hyde

Fawkes has been very inconsistent this past week or so.  Some days he is right there - Sunday during a trainer ride he loped around a jump course outside like a school horse.  Unfortunately, other days, he is a spooky mess.  On his trainer ride Saturday they had to move into the indoor because he was freaking out about the mini horses playing in their pasture.

Jekyll

Monday after I got back from my trip, I went early in the morning for a quick hack before spending the rest of the day with my visiting friend.  I haven't ridden that early in awhile, I grabbed him right after he finished his breakfast.  I wanted to ride outside but the rising sun made that difficult, you can't actually see much when trotting directly eastward in CO during sunrise.  So we went inside.

Well, you would think he had never been in the indoor before.  The jump standards had been moved to a corner and that corner was unacceptable.  As was the corner by the entrance because of the weird morning light.  Oh, and then he saw himself in the mirror at the far end of the ring and started flipping shit down there.  On a positive note, his reactions have generally become less extreme and he is telegraphing more instead of just spinning out from underneath me, but right now I am just so over the horse that can't cope with anything.

Transforming to Hyde

I try not to push too hard outside of lessons since I am trainer dependent but I couldn't let this go. I did 20m circle work in the middle of the ring where he found life acceptable and gradually made those circles bigger and more ovular into the scary corners.  We managed to get all the way into mirror corner, although he was tense, and most of the way into standards/light corner although that wasn't great.

Yesterday Trainer R said he was good under saddle but kind of crappy and spooky on the ground.  So I rode someone else's horse for a break.  Had a nice pleasant ride, which was great.

I ordered magnesium supplements to see if that can penetrate the haze in his brain and my trainer has some other thoughts, but we will see.  It doesn't help that I have some non-horse stress going on.  In a way, it is a relief that he is doing this with the trainers too.  He isn't just reacting to me, something is going on in his head.