Well, we got stuck riding at home again today! Sorry Funny, hopefully tomorrow we can hit the trails! I was so tired after working this week that I slept in til 9:45!!! holy cow! Whoops. The horses didn't wake me. Either they slept in too and stayed out or they came in and made noise and didn't get a reaction and left. I woke up a few times but kept falling back asleep so... guess I needed it. Apparently my M, W, Th schedule is harder on me than I thought.
I did a few chores around the house and was supposed to go ride with Sharon and Jamie. We didn't have a set time but they just had to run a quick errand first, so... I kept waiting. Finally I realized that they were taking way longer than they should have and I was about to give up, but then they messaged. Luckily I had enough time at that point to go lunge Lyric. So I did that. Then I was done and they still hadn't left but once I grabbed Dan and was about to head to Ashland to ride by myself they messaged and said they were on the way. Phew! It was a fun ride, but by the time we got home, it was 4:15 pm. So, I didn't think I could take Funny to Ashland. Plus I was starving. So... I grabbed a quick snack and then we tacked up and headed to the arena.
I told myself that I was going to do some pillar work with her because she's lost her chest muscling. So we walked up to the arena and we did some pillar work and shift backs on the way up there. But then the sky was so pretty! So I hopped on to get some photos between the ears, after taking ground photos. And then we got in the arena and just went to work. Whoops. I'll keep incorporating it into our rides though. And maybe throw in some lunge days and groundwork days as we go too. I've got to get all the ponies back on track.
We had a pretty good ride. It started out quite good! She was soft and quiet and settled quickly. Tracking left is harder though and she wants to fall in and brace. I got a little annoyed and fell back into old habits so we struggled a bit. But it wasn't too bad. Then we cantered and the right lead was great but after we processed and I went to try the left lead, she got SUPER quick and runny and then unbalanced and then we just started to spiral into our old habits and spun around and then she was cantering and it was awful. We kind of fought for a bit. I finally got her pulled up and we took a breath. And then we sat for a minute. And then we started again and I went back to my new habits and focused on those and rode counterbent and she settled. And then I reminded myself that by riding counter bent, it throws her back upright instead of falling in and then she can balance. And when she can balance, she doesn't have to run. So, while it wasn't a nice pretty inside bend, it was a much better balanced trot. And it wouldn't have scored well, but neither would her falling in and unbalanced trot! We then managed to have a decent left lead canter following the same principles. phew!
We finished with the nice left lead canter and then a lovely left lead trot and then I let her have an even lovlier right trot and we quit. But we also had some good soft trot work earlier and got one nice trot lengthen. We also got some leg yields and even some shoulder fore in the trot! And we also finished on a fairly nice halt from the trot.
We hacked back via the driveway and as we came out to the culdesac our neighbor was walking. Funny startled but was fine and didn't do more than slightly jump. The neighbor was sweet and we chatted briefly and carried on. Good pony!
No comments:
Post a Comment