On Tuesday I finally got to ride again! We ended up outside and at first I was completely sure that I wasn't going to ride Chilly. She was having a ball, running and bucking on the lungline and I was convinced that the safest place to be that day was on the ground.
However after about 20 minutes of babyish behavior she settled down. I took some time to walk her over the outside trail course (about 5 different obstacles set up with painted poles as well as the trail bridge) which she handled like she'd seen painted poles all her life. You know how some horses have an issue with different colors, and how a plain white pole in the indoor looks nothing like the striped colorful poles in the outdoor. No big deal. So I figured what the heck, Lucy was an idiot the first 10 times she was in the outdoor and I still rode her, Chilly had 20 minutes of fun after having almost 2 weeks off....
So I got on, I have to apologize I half thought this baby stuff would be entertaining for you, my readers, but I'm afraid to say this turns out like all my other Chilly stories. I got on her and she was excellent. Walked and jogged all around the trail stuff and the outdoor like a big horse. (It did help that there were 3 other adult horses in the ring who we've ridden with several times, and I lent her turnout buddy Oscar to a friend so he was even out there too) We even walked over 5 poles in a row, her first time walking over poles with someone on her back. After about 10 minutes I was good. I conquered the fear bird, but it was IV week so I was drained.
D got on her for a bit and worked her a little harder than I did, and even jogged over some of the single poles lying around.
I got my IV on Thursday which killed my Thursday plans, no matter how hard I try I just can't do more than eat supper then watch TV until I fall asleep on the couch.
Friday we lunged and did showmanship (shes really doing well with it) then today we had another lesson with D. Some days I wish he would push me harder although while the lesson is going on I don't want to be pushed at all!
We did a bunch of jogging and walking on the rail while the other girls loped, then D used the trick we all use on little kids that arn't sure about loping, the game of 'catch up'. Every time you are the leader you have to lope all the way around until you catch up with the group of horses again where you become the last horse in the line. And it worked. We did almost run into a horse once, and we never loped more than 1/2 of the ring (mostly because it took 1/2 a trip around at a fast trot to pick up a lope) but we did it several times.
Once we changed direction, D had me jogging a small circle at either end (the other girls stayed in the center) and as we left the center of our circle, going back to the short end of the arena to extend to a trot on my urging, then once she was trotting to push her to lope off down the long side. We had some better transitions this way, when I asked for the long trot we stayed together more than when she just trotted off on her own, and she could really see that the lope cue was not just a 'faster' cue but something different. This meant that we were only really loping a long side before coming back to a jog, but it also helped both of us relax into the jog, we knew we had to long trot before we loped and that was very different from the slow jog circles.
All in all a good couple of days with the girl. Only two weeks until our first big show, stay tuned.
No comments:
Post a Comment