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.

Taking a breather

So, after our challenging- but then good- dressage lesson on Tuesday, I decided I didn’t want to overface myself and take Oats for round #2 battle in the outdoor and I would have a ‘fun day’ in the field with him on Wednesday.

A spunkier Oats on the weekend. Photo courtesy of Hannah R.

I find myself often wanting to ride in the field- I guess because I feel freer, less constrained and less ‘trapped’ into pushing Oats for a workout in the ring? More freedom, I guess, and a lot less fighting, as it turns out! And I have to learn to re-train my temper- as my trainer said, work first on me, then on Oats, and then bring both of us to the challenging situation. Don’t jump right into the challenge, because it will kind of blow up in our faces…

So, with that knowledge, I deliberately set out for a fun ride, not a fight.

And it WAS FUN!

We rode in the smaller field that has a hill, and some cavalettis. I dragged out a cavaletti- they are light because the wood is completely dry-rotted through, but a mega pain the butt to wrangle, ha. Oats was patient here.

Put your butt into it! Photo courtesy of Hannah R.

I set the cavaletti up in the middle setting, friendly and low, and we warmed up and then trotted and cantered it both directions a bunch of times. I got bored by it after awhile (things were going very smoothly!) and decided to take Oats up to do some hillwork.

Newsflash- the hillwork was so hard for Oats. He was tired! It was hard work! I noticed a real weakness in his right hind while cantering up the hill and trying to maintain the canter. He swapped a few times and broke into trot the rest.

I left the canter alone and we trotted up and walked down the steepest part of the hill, focusing mostly on getting his right hind to step up the hill. It was definitely hard but good work for the pony. You should have seen him after, in the cross-ties…He was exhausted! Poor guy.

So tired.