Ahhh, I tempted fate today, but it worked out in my favor. :)
This morning we had the saddle fitter come to check the saddle for Lyric and then she ended up doing some osteopathic work on her and Dan. Poor Funny, yet again, gets the short end of the stick! She didn't even get adjusted this week. But she did get her stifles shockwaved yesterday. And maybe I'll adjust her tomorrow. Anyways... after that Mike and I took the mustang out for lunch and then a little drive. And then I had time to take Funny to Ashland and meet Sharon and Baylor. Yay!
We met up and went for about an hour and fifteen minute hack. We did a little bit of trotting but mostly walked and chatted. It was fun! Funny was pretty good with Baylor. She only pinned her ears at him once when he got a little close. And then when we let Sharon lead in the trot, she was inverted and hollow and charging after him, but we didn't trot for very long. The next path Sharon let me lead and it was much more relaxed. For me anyways.. not sure how Baylor felt about it. :) Then we did a third path that was more wide open so Sharon could have come beside us if they wanted. Except Funny kept weaving to cut them off. Ha ha. It was a nice hack. And an absolutely beautiful day. It was hot in the sun but there was a great breeze and it was lovely in the woods. Not humid at all and not quite hot enough overnight for the bugs to have come out yet. Glorious! I think today was probably the last of the non-humidity or not quite hot days sadly though.
After our hack I decided to take Funny into the arena so Sharon and I chatted a bit and then split ways. I walked a little bit and she was slightly anxious but then settled quickly. We picked up the trot and she was actually quite pleasant at first. Then she got a little quick but I did my checklist and she settled. She still wants to lean into my left leg and fall in, and we started to fight a bit but I remembered, so we just did some smaller circles. Which drives me bananas because... we're sort of cheating, but... I guess it's creating better body muscle memory and eventually she'll get strong enough to not have to make smaller circles and hold herself upright on her own without having to cheat and use the circle. We played with the shallow serpentine loop and it's way easier in a proper arena. So then we did some leg yielding. And she was quite good! We had to do some circles to rebalance but overall a MUCH more pleasant ride for us both. She did toss her hind leg at my left/inside leg a few times but I just ignored it and rode through and made sure I had given her an out and went back to riding her outside shoulder around instead and it got better.
Then we just ran through the western dressage test 1-1. I had to make a few extra circles here and there but overall she did it quite nicely! COOL!!That's actually a fun test for her too. We stopped and I let her process (again, I had been doing it earliier too) and then we went back to work. I played with some more canter and she settled quite nicely and we had some really nice canter work and even some nice canter to trot to canter transitions. Those were way better than the walk to trot transitions. She's still so explosive into those. I can't quite figure out my aids for that yet still. We even did some more leg yielding and some trot lengthens that felt like actual lengthens. Tiny ones, but still.. actual lengthens vs just speed. Which is HUGE for Funny! And then we did some stretchy circles (properly by slowly letting her out vs dropping her) and she felt great. We even added a tiny bit of reinback. Which, she fights at first, but then once her feet get moving, she's good. And we finished with a few steps of shoulder in sitting trot left. And she was lovely!
So then we got a cookie and took a cool down hack around ptyeradactyl lake. Good pony! After she got a rinse and she was thirsty... she was lapping the hose water like a dog. Hee hee. Sadly I had left my phone at the trailer so I didn't get a funny video. Girl, if you would just drink from a bucket it would be so much easier!
So yay! I'm glad that we're back to our normal. Still feral, but not combative. And I'm definitely not as hormonal today so I'm sure that played a huge role!
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