Forever Today

Yes I’m on a real I’m from Barcelona kick right now, apparently. Anyways, I had my jump lesson in the pouring rain last night, and I did my dressage semi-private also in the rain on Tuesday. This is a recap of Tuesday!

Back to the field!

We worked in the big field – ooh- exciting! As it turns out, I need to be better about not ‘Yahoo-ing’ around the field only, because when I go to do work in it, it gets exponentially…harder….when your pony is used to kind of just screwing around in it.

Nevertheless, it was fun! And hard! But fun! We used the angles and the elevation- small hills, going sideways across the field, terrain changes, to our advantage and as exercises.

My lesson partner and I warmed up, and then we worked on straightness with Karen. Easier said than done in a field, wow. I wobbled my

Dressage like this, except it was grey and rainy.

way across, was not straight pretty much anytime…Even with picking a focal point (trees). We trotted across the field, walked, halted, did a turn on the forehand 3X (I got seasick doing this?? He was spinning too fast and I was getting dizzy. Karen said to look up instead of at his neck if I was feeling sick), and then trot or canter back in a straight line, trot, walk, halt and more turns on the forehand in the opposite direction.

Next, we cantered up a hill, trotted the turn and did sitting trot (VERY collected/controlled) down. Wow. My abs!

A few reps of this, and we worked to an even more steep hill and attempted canter down it. Key word here: Attempted. Yeah it kind of went oh, big trot, canter, SPLAT!…

A big farm machine started rattling across the field next door, and you could just hear what the horses were thinking…BOOM! So we trotted to the top of the field to continue/wrap up our lesson. It was more trot-canter transitions, and in the attempt on the downhill, be totally ok with not getting the transition. It was more important to make the attempt, and be able to control the trot immediately afterwards. It was pretty hard! Oats got excited on the downhill and wanted to start shaking his head, etc.

It rained on and off the whole time. Yay…Our summer weather has been SO BAD. UGH. What shitty weather! If it’s not raining/drizzly/grey/foreboding, it’s sunny, cold and soooo freaking windy. Blah.

Good rides, bad weather.