Winter Music

  photos: 6-26 steamy lesson took lyric to barbara's for a lesson with laura. in raging heat and wanted to snuggle with smarty, who was not interested. ;)  so hot. a little lazy at the walk but trotted and cantered and warmed up nice. then did ground poles to practice... some single instead of jumps and some with two poles.. some with flower boxes. trotted a course of ground poles. overjumped the flower box the first time. ha ha. then every other ground pole got set to a small jump. trotted through them.. trot them all. no cantering other than allowing her to land in a canter on the back side but then bring her back down immediately. Went better than expected.  course originally was outside line, to two jumps on a circle arc, then short s curve to short s curve to short s curve. Then flipped it and did it backwards. So... course was long and easy and flowing, to tight and turning... or vice versa. Lyric did great! I was rusty and jumped up her neck some. but she was jumpi...

  Well.. those new shoes Patrick put on behind might have done the trick! Lyric only bottomed out once or twice today and not that bad. Whoo hooo! Fingers crossed.  We had lessons with Kelly Eaton today.  Since Dan had hacked Friday with Sharon I decided to ride him first so that I could hack after my second lesson with Lyric and give her more time in the woods. And then I might have had more time to warm her up too. Since the first lesson was at 7:45 am. ;) So Dan went first. Even though both of them were snoozing when I got up to feed. After his lesson I came and got Lyric and she is in raging heat so she came running back to greet Dan. Handy... now she's right there for me to catch. :) I did hose her off before we hauled because I didn't want her to get sweaty in the trailer. Even though she wasn't sweaty yet. She was dry when we got to Ashland though!   I tacked up and took her for a warm up hack around Heron Lake. We had plenty of time so then I also went around...

 rode at home.  gorgeous day although a bit sweaty in the arena. not as much breeze there.  good girl. trying hard. Lost her hind end really hard (like rolled a fetlock) twice and then fairly hard another 3 times or so. mostly tracking left but not every time. had a nice stretchy warm up and then "held" her but got some really nice self carriage where I could soften and i think she stayed pretty uphill. the canter departs are getting so much smoother and easier and quicker... and our downwards too. the canter was quite nice today! The trot had moments. She is hanging on the left rein and I can't get her into the right, both directions. she's stiff bending left unless i overbend her... and ride small circles, but then I could open her back up and she'd hold a nice "frame". did some nice leg yields.  overall, quite nice. just... struggling with the right rein contact. hard to ride to the light and give to the heavy, especially alone. I don't like when ...

  I'm so proud of us!!    Jacel said she would teach today but I had kind of already offered to volunteer at the Ashland show. Luckily she said she could teach me at 8 am and Caroline didn't need me to noon, so... yay! I was debating whether I should take Funny or Lyric but decided to take Lyric. Partly because it's been raining so much I didn't know how the arena was going to hold up and figured Lyric would be jumping much smaller, but also because... I wanted to jump Lyric!  So... bright and early this morning we loaded up and headed to Barbaras. I had a moment of panic because... Lyric likes her routine... we had jumped yesterday... I'm not sure if her saddle really fits... and then when we got there.. she was nervous and it had poured buckets last night (not at my house, but at Barbara's) and the arena was obviously wet in spots. And Lyric isn't exactly the most catty of horses even on a good day with good footing. I mean heck.. I'm still not convinc...

   Today was Lyric's turn to go to Ashland, so.. we did. We met Sharon and Baylor this morning. It was humid and soggy but it was a fun ride. We met Caroline and Oliver when we were tacking up and Oliver is so cute. He's at a fun age. I gave him one of my broken dragonflies and one good one to play with and he was excited. Apparently it kept him entertained while Caroline taped off the XC course and she said they even played "the floor is lava". Ha ha. Awww cute! Lyric was a good girl and didn't mind her dragonfly on her head, which was good! Of course she shook off one side of the wings halfway through our ride and then shortly after the other half, so she finished the ride with a big blue worm bobbing around her head. Ha ha. Doh!  It was a fun ride. We had to avoid the beaver bridges, so we decided to do the perimeter trail. Lyric was a bit jumpy and nervous today for some reason. There were ground trolls I guess. ;) And the occasional deer, and then the dogs by...