Sorry!

I'm a bad blogger.  Things are steady and ongoing and thankfully no upsets.  D is back riding Chilly for the next week, and I'm going to ride Hottie and Oscar this week in prep for heading off to the clinic/expo on Friday. 

Chilly is finally starting to look like a grown up show horse.  She got clipped today and got her mane trimmed.  D was happy with the progress shes made while I was riding her, and I'm happy with the way shes going when he rides her.  Its a good mix.

All of the babies have finally arrived, all colts, a chestnut, what we think is a roan (he's only 24 hours old and roans only really start to show after the baby hair falls out) and a dun.  The first 2 mares that were bred are confirmed in foal, so everything is progressing there.

Oh and it snowed this week, 2 inches.... I am so ready for summer.

Feeling like you ride like crap, then having your mind changed.

So on Wednesday night I went out and had a little ride on Chilly.  We just did walk/trot for about 20 minutes.  We were both a little stiff still from the weekend but it was good to get back in the saddle.

Thursday night we ended up having two other horses in the ring with us and silly me still wanted to work on our 'goals', Chilly just wanted to hang out with the other horses.  I was pushing to get back to where we were when we ended off on Sunday but Chilly was focusing on the other horses and what they were doing.  I kept going and even tried to lope her in a circle.  The other girls waited at the other end of the ring so that we could do a 20 meter circle at one end, but again Chilly just wanted to be with her friends.  We had several near misses, as we drifted away from our circle and into the crowd. At one point I nearly came off as I tried to get her to turn, and she ran towards the other horses.  We did lope a bit down each long side to end on a decent note and then went back to the rail with the other girls and long trotted her for a bit to let her and me burn off some frustration. A lot of my issues were that I was bracing though my entire body trying to keep it together, and hold my position in hopes that it would keep me in the saddle.

I went home feeling like a bit of a failure.  What kind of rider was I if I couldn't even canter a circle or sit to what I have been told is a very easy to sit lope. 

But like the good horse student I am I went home and made a list of what good has happened in that ride-

-We rode with 2 other horses in the ring and were able to avoid them at all times (other than while cantering) this is a huge impovement in 2 weeks.
-Despite the fact that I was loose in the saddle and Chilly was somewhat out of control, she stayed under me.  A more nervous youngster, or one that didn't care about her rider could have ducked a shoulder and spun out from under me with very little effort.
-We loped within 3-5 long trot steps several times.  On the weekend it was taking 10-15 steps of long trotting to get even a step of a lope.

I think my 'goals' of loping lots of circles right away weren't such a great idea.  I have to remember that she doesn't have a ton of saddle time, and that as calm and mature as she seems she's still a baby.

So on Saturday D told me to tack up Oscar and we had a training ride.  My goal was to treat Oscar like a baby and to get comfortable asking him the things I should be asking Chilly at this time.  D had me lifting my arms all over the place and getting Oscar do do things while my arms were up in the air.  This was to get me out of my "equation box" hand position.  D wanted to remind me that with babies sometimes you can't sit pretty, that you have to get down and funky to get the job done, rather than giving the cues like you would give them to an adult horse and hoping they figure it out.  For example, sometimes you need to get a hand up in the air to pull the horses head to the side so that their weight will shift in the direction you want, while on an adult horse you might only have to move your hand an inch or two.

D also got me loping on Oscar, which is not normally fun.  His hocks and stifles are shot and because of that he has a very bouncy lope.  D had me sitting deep, rounding my back a little and getting my hands way out in front of me and 'chasing' him into the lope. The 'chasing' him with my hands loosed up my upper body and kept me from bracing my back and hips, and with my back a little rounded it allowed my hips to close a little more.  I find it hard to have a full range of motion with my hips to begin with but having them with a little more of a closed angle allowed that little bit of range that I have to be fully functional, and follow the horses movement rather than trying to just hold the 'upright' position.  Basically I went from riding in a dressage 'frame' to riding more in a 3 point position, approaching the base of a jump.

It made a HUGE improvement!  For the first time in 2 years I was able to lope on Oscar and not feel like my a$$ was bouncing out of the saddle with every stride.  I felt like I knew how to ride again!  So for the next week until Thursday (when his owner comes home for a month) I'm going to ride Oscar, and D is going to pick up Chilly again and push her on the lope issue.  I'm backing off and sticking to the steering and walking and jogging for a bit until she gets some more lope miles on her. 

Barbie pony, that one of my old lesson kids owns looks like shes going to be having her baby in the next 24 hours.  It will be by the same sire as Chilly and should be a nice looking baby.

Now that was a clinic!

And boy am I paying for it today!  Our rides on Saturday were tough.  He kept us at a walk and jog all of the lesson and I think both I and the girl I was riding with were happy with that.  (She was riding a 4 year old paint that she's shown a bit walk/trot but hasn't loped a bunch at shows with).

We spent most of our am lesson flexing the horses though their neck and bodies and really trying to get them to move their ribcage around the bend of the circle.  Chilly was decent going to the right but kept falling into the circle going to the left.  We used circles of various sizes to work on getting them listening to us and our legs.  Chilly fought me a lot.  There was a lot going on, she was dead in heat, and we were throwing her into a strange situation and asking her to work though it.  She dealt with it, but it was a stressful first ride.

In the afternoon I was really tired from trying to keep her going and focused on me during the morning ride.  We did the same warm up exercises, building on what we did in the AM then adding to it. About 30 min into the ride I was tired out.  J (the clinician) got on Chilly and flexed her while the other rider did some loping.  After a bit of that J took Chilly out and did a lot of pushing her foreword (an issue that we've had) and changing directions and bend about every 6-10 jog strides.  We noticed at this point that because he took charge of the situation and wasn't giving her time to think or worry Chilly stopped pushing against the bit, and fighting his hands as he guided her around.  After a bit of that J pushed her foreword into a long trot until she finally broke into a lope, and he loped her around for a couple of trips around the arena.  He was impressed with how willing she was for a stranger to push her out of her comfort zone, and with the fact that she stopped pushing against the bit told him it was a habit more than a pain issue.

We did a bit of a showmanship lesson that evening.  He thought that Chilly was very good, and that I 'knew what I was doing'.  He had some very good pointers about new styles, and how judges are asking to have the movements separate instead of flowing together without much of a separation of the elements.  Now the judges want to see you completely finish a movement before moving to the next.  It was also good because I think that Chilly is so far behind but with a group of some decent horses her setup was just as quick, her backups as straight and her trot off's just as correct as everyone else's.  Her pivot still needs a guiding hand but J thought it wouldn't be long before I wouldn't need to remind her much at all.  Even now I might poke her twice in the shoulder for a 360 where two months ago I had to push her around.

For the next mornings ride we tried a few different things.  I used a side rein for 5 minutes to get her to flex to the right (about the same amount of bend as on a 20m circle).  She could only fight against her self this way, and other than pushing against it for a moment or two, she quickly figured out how to give to the pressure and then stood quietly waiting for us to come and unhook it.  I don't normally like to do this anymore but the rubber donut of the side rein gave more than just tying a rein.  And she had a bit of a block bending and giving to the rein that direction, and then fighting against us when we forced the issue.

Anyways we also tried a very long running martingale which also helped me 'set a barrier' so that her head could not go too high.  Other than one or two moments (both of which included things going on outside of the ring that she wanted to gawk at) she really didn't need it much at all.  She really gave to my leg and inside rein when we did our bending circle work, and I was even able to use a little inside leg to outside rein to ask her to roll her head down a little. 

Then J let the other girl lope a little then turned to me and told me to try it.  I was scared and nervous but I cowgirled up and tried it anyways.  We went large to the right and I should have stayed on a circle as she would lope the long sides then break to a trot when she got to the corner, its easier at the stage she is at to either got straight or turn a circle but not do both.  I lost a bit of my balance but Chilly was a good girl like her mom and quit loping right away.

Going to the left we stayed on a circle which helped.  We only got about 3/4 of a circle loping but we did manage to lope both directions!

In the afternoon I knew I would be loping lots so I took some drugs to help with the pain and the RA brain and got myself ready.  Her jog work was so much better in the afternoon!  She's so hard to keep going that my legs were really starting to feel the burn but we kept working and she was moving around my legs and around the arena like a broke horse!  (All at a walk and jog of course).  Then J stepped up and wanted me to lope again.  I stayed on the circle for both directions this time and that was a better idea.  I also remembered to get into my 'trainer seat' sitting very deep on my jeans pocket, shoulders rounded a little, hands out in front (open but ready to gather reins or throw them away).  I was much more prepared this time, but was having a hard time getting her into the lope (kicking and kissing for all I was worth but she was as tired as I was) At that point J kinda took the options out of my control.  He stepped into the center of my circle and pretended he had a lung whip and the like the lungline horse Chilly is she stepped up into a lope.  It felt fast and I worried about staying on but we did it.  J told me I just have to do it.  That the only way the two of us were going to get better at cantering is to do lots of it.  I have a month, as we're taking another clinic with him on the first weekend in May so I told him we'd be able to do a bunch of circles at that point!  To end the lesson we worked on turns on the haunches and forehand (mentally hard but not on their bodies).

It was scary and this weekend defently pushed some limits that I thought I had but I went from dreading my lesson on Sunday morning to being excited that afternoon at all the riding we were going to have to do to get ready for next month. One of the girls got some of the first lopes on video and I'm trying to find out if she kept them or not.  If she still has them I'll try and get some posted.

And Lucy had her baby on Thursday night!  A large colt

Its snowing...again...

For the 3rd straight day its snowing and freezing rain.  Its April for goodness sakes!  For the second time in less than a week the highway was closed again, students in PEI had their 5th day of school off in a row (they have been off since last Wednesday.)  They just announced on the news that we got 40 cm of snow again over the past 3 days, for a total of 80 cm over the past week (31 inches or so google tells me).  Total snow fall at this point is over 13 feet. 

We had hoped to be riding outside by the time the clinic came up.  Now its only 3 days away and we're struggling to get TO the barn to ride, let alone ride outside.

Sigh... sometimes living in the maritimes sucks!