Until we get there

I was feeling pretty blah this week (ok, REALLY blah) and down and bummed and crabby.

So, I tacked my darling Oaty-pony up, who was typically thrilled to see me, and showed his great pleasure at seeing his loving owner by running away from me in his freaking pen…Horses…

Run wild

But anyways, since there is nowhere to run in his pen, I nabbed him quickly. Tacked him up and took him to the field. And this is where I may have gotten a little run away with myself…I thought, fun ride in field, easy ride. So did Oats!

What it turned into: Fun ride in field, school cavalettis in field (must let go of grabby hands pulling to a distance, rather I should be LETTING GO to a distance. And that his how, friends, I got a trot in six-canter to a five, and then immediately screwed it up the second go-round with a six-six…due to my weird pulling back and adding a short stride to a distance). Hah.

Oats was game though, so game. We trotted over the ditch and he gave it a BIG jump! yeeeah!!

And then I immediately got too focused on getting a canter that wasn’t a big, giraffe canter. Strung out, breaking, blah blah blah. We cantered for AGES. Like the band Ages and Ages, we were going, going going….At one point, I sat tall (something I am not good at) and went tap! tap! tap! tap! with my crop behind my leg as we were negotiating a particularly tricky ‘downhill’ section of the field. Oats needed a bit more ‘encouragement’ to stop breaking and flying into a crazy-big-legs akimbo trot.

Focused

So, it was both good and bad. Good that we worked solidly on something we suck at, in fairly challenging terrain, and a bit bad because I thought I was going to just do a quickie hop over cavalettis, canter, ditch type ride. And now Oats probably hates me. Hah well more than he normally does….?

He was a sweaty beast after that ride. I felt good about it. Better than I have for quite awhile. No lesson today because I have to drop stuff off for the Saanich fair!