Dressage under fire

Went to my dressage lesson with more than a little trepidation yesterday. Let’s review why, shall we?

So easy

• I am going through a lot of pressure with my parent drama.
• Oats doesn’t respond well to dressage on a good day.
• I was exhausted.
• I had taken a lot of time off doing dressage- a few weeks, due to holiday/illness/weather. The last lesson I had last week was a jumping one!
• I am an excuse machine?
• I was wearing new boots. Ouch!

Yeah, so. There’s that. I was luckily able to side-step my parental drama for a bit- by telling them I was unavailable, which was 100% true. On Tuesdays, I have enough time to get home, take my dog out, unpack my lunch things, grab a snack, get dressed and drive to my lesson, of which I am always late for.

But, I sucked it up and did it. Nothing makes me feel more genuine, more ‘myself’ than riding and challenging myself in lessons, even if I SOOO don’t want to do it beforehand. I’m always glad I did!

So, how did it go?

Well, like many things in life, not 100% great but not 100% bad. Oats fought back a bit, was a bit sassy, but slowly we are improving. We did some polework and the horses got pretty fired up and testy with each other. Funny, you can tell we hadn’t done a group lesson in awhile because it seemed like both Oats and Chanel wanted to chase each other!

Oats’ newest evasion is hopping into the canter when the trot gets too difficult. He did that A LOT. Man does it feel awkward!! We cantered through more than a few trot poles!

I do get tense and clingy when he does it, because sometimes it feels like the ‘hop’ is the first step into ‘launch into outerspace’ for me. It did NOT get that bad, he did try some bs behaviour (this is still Oats we are talking about…) but he tried. And tried and tried. That is what is important to me, that he TRIES at least. I do want to encourage his ‘tries’ and don’t want to shut him down when he gives me some more effort. It does tend to be a bit nerve-wracking though!

So, it was both good and bad. I left feeling more like myself again. That was a good thing.

I am also going to try out a supplement to give Oats some more positive energy. I feel like he needs a little ‘more’ this winter, perhaps due to his age (13? I think?) and to get him more ‘oomph’ and less balky and rude.