Ugh....
I had a half day today. Yay! And the weather was quite lovely considering it's August. Lower humidity and a cool breeze at times. Still hot but much more pleasant! So.. I grabbed Funny and we headed to the arena for a ride. I was talking to a friend today while working on her horses and she mentioned using a running martingale on Funny, just to help keep her from flinging her head so much. So.... I thought maybe she had a point, so I put it on. Super long... so it would only engage when she really flung her head at me.
I'm not so sure that was a smart choice. But maybe it wasn't a wrong choice. It just... didn't really seem to help and we ended up fighting in the beginning of our ride. Maybe it had nothing to do with the martingale.. maybe it was my mindset.. maybe it is because Funny is still in heat a little bit.. maybe it's because we were in the arena and haven't done field dressage in a bit.. maybe it's because we jumped yesterday... I don't know. But it wasn't a good ride. I resorted to getting handsy and being "insistent" that she yield to contact... She was fussy and bracy and more combative again. We tried.. both of us. But both of us also resorted back to our bad habits. Sigh... I did take the martingale off pretty quickly but the ride didn't really get any better. Our canters were better... and there were no rears. And at the very end we had a fairly pleasant few circles, so.. we called it quits. And we did side pass over the pole at the very end of our ride which was impressive. It wasn't a lovely side pass, but she did it without getting too angry or me having to be too handsy or leggy.
Sigh... It's just so hard... I can't figure out how to ride her. I saw a post about how someone said after watching her warm up, in which she was doing "shock and awe" type stuff to her horse, the trainer said "When you're done chasing your horse away from you, let's talk about how we want to get her to move WITH you instead". And... ahhhh, I want that. Funny is reactive yes.. but almost too reactive. I don't want her to be afraid of my aids... or resistant to my aids.. I want her to seek them. But me yanking on her face or insisting she give to the pressure and yield to contact... that just doesn't seem like the right way to teach her to seek the bit. YET... I can't figure out how to teach her to seek it and without any contact she's just running on the forehand and/or getting quicker and quicker. Because I did try that today... what happens if we pick up the trot on the buckle. She runs! That's what happens. And... maybe it's a lack of balance... no self carriage? Maybe it's true that she does need to learn a relationship with contact first and be willing to give to pressure and be soft and then I can encourage her to seek the bit?? I don't know. I just don't know. And my pride pretty much refuses to let me send her to someone... partly because I don't want her to get hurt or "break her spirit"... partly because I want to freakin figure it out on my own... and a lot of it is that I can't send her away now because then I can't take Dan or Lyric anywhere to ride. But really, I probably wouldn't send her away anyways. Part of me thinks that it's not just me sucking... that she's just really hard... she's a red alpha mare... But then maybe it's just not true. Maybe I do just suck and had I sent her off, she's be floating around like a lovely dressage pony now. Sigh... I do think I need to pick a path and stick with it instead of floating back and forth, but... I just can't figure out which path is best. Poor pony. No wonder she's combative. I keep changing the rules slightly or not so slightly.
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