Today was supposed to be a work day but the original farm postponed, so I added a new farm with 3 horses. Which was great because it meant I was home by 1 pm. :) And since yesterday was so cold and miserable and then Lexi came.. She worked on Funny and Funny was pretty good. She kept "assuming the position" for crotch scratches and starting at Lexi, like... "well come on... get on with it". ha ha.. Goober! She was tight in her poll as usual but did eventually let Lexi in. :) But because of that, I didn't ride yesterday. So I was grateful to be able to ride today. Especially since the sun came out!
I opted to take Funny to Ashland and we had a great ride. We hacked the woods and picked the hilly paths. We stopped at the XC field and walked up and down the bank a few times. She was naughty and said no to the middle bank down at first so we did it a few times. She's much braver trotting them, but I'm hoping that by continuing to walk them repeatedly, she starts to get the hang of them. We also did the ditch, which was no problem. I opted out of the water bank today. Not sure why... We hit the hills and did five terraces "backwards" and then took sideways back down. We trotted a little bit on the good footing but she was a bit quick. And then on our way back, on the other side of the swimming lake, we found a Christmas tree! Fun! We ended our hack and headed to the dressage arena.
I wanted to play just a little bit. And she was LOVELY! We had a really nice ride. She got a little quick at times, but overall, it's such a big difference than it has been. I stuck with my "hold firmer pressure til she softens and then drop it" in the beginning and then was able to tweak that to a "firmer pressure til she softens then a light pressure" and... she managed to not be braced, lift her back, and have a very soft connection to the bit. Whoo hoo! And we had some work that felt really nice! Like... I can't wait to see how it looks on video because I really hope it looks as good as it feels! I'm going to be really sad if it's not good. We even played with some transitions within the gait today. She's not that good at it yet.. but it's slowly slowly slowly getting better! We also did 20 meter, then 15 meter, then 10 meter canter circles. Her right lead canter feels way better but she struggled more with the 10 meter canter circle than the left. Interesting... She also got a little humpy today and threw in a few half hearted bucks. We got some super leg yields and some super trot shoulder ins too!! We even finished with a nice halt!
No comments:
Post a Comment