Winter Music

Lyric and I went to the cavaletti clinic this morning. Poor girl.. I think she feels like I'm picking on her because she's been ridden a lot lately, and taken a lot of places. But.. it's just how the cookie crumbles darlin'. :)    We loaded up and headed to High Point for our lesson with Veronica and Kristin. Kristin was on Hottie... Hot Potato! One of my cute little pony patients. We had fun.  We worked on shortening her stride and encouraging lift and push instead of just running. Beth reminded me that it's going to feel very sluggish and underpowered to me, but it's not. Well, it may be underpowered but that's because I can't expect her to sit and push and be strong yet. It's a step. But it has to start with the slower more controlled, shorter step. And sure enough, as we kept going, she started to feel more powerful. Yay! I had to balance keeping her short and not getting in her face. But it went back to my ride with Jessica yesterday too. More l...

  Today was the day that Jessica and I got together to help each other out. She's a lovely hunter rider who has a lot of OTTB's and they all look lovely and have that nice forward swinging stride with a nice neck arch. And she's hilarious. And... she wants to event! So... we decided to do a knowledge swap day. We met up at Ashland. I brought Lyric and she brought Poppy, her cute bay pocket rocket type TB mare.  We started in the arena and she gave me some pointers. She uses a lot of ... illiterations??... Anyways, it was helpful! It was a whole lot of info and I probably can't remember it all. But here goes... Reward the try! Even the tiniest little bit of try... release and reward. And if they give you the wrong answer, don't stop or "reward" that because then you're confusing them and teaching them the wrong answer. Give them lots of breaks so that they don't begrudge working. Keep elastic elbows. You can use your hands to tighten/hold/soften but...

 Liz lesson this am, since Dan lost a shoe: For her warm up stretch trot, don't rush it. Don't chase her. Stay "behind" the motion and let it happen. When she rocks on her hind end, then she can get more reach and swing in the front end. Ride her a lot like Funny... sit down on the back hind limb... to help elevate the front end. IT's cool, because she CAN GO UPHILL!! She likes much more contact so have the contact. Help carry her but with soft elastic elbows. Keep my inside hand higher than my outside hand. Ride her tracking left with my inside hand back to my hip to keep a straight line to the bit but to help encourage her AO axis to be correct.. don't just hang and hold though. Do the fun rock back before upward transitions. Post diagonally from the inside to the outside to help balance her and step into outside stirrup to help balance her. Ride her straight out of her shoulders to keep all four limbs underneath her. Super good girl. Felt quite strong and g...

  Ahhh, my normal happy sweet Lyric is back. To her credit, she was not being accosted by bugs! And it wasn't as hot. We just rode at home this morning. I was going to take Dan to Ashland for a hack but it was nice enough that I decided to ride Lyric at home first. So that's what we did.    She was super good too! We had a nice ride for most of the ride. She was still a tiny bit braced tracking to the left, but not too bad today. And apparently I can turn my shoulders to the left with her. We played with shoulder in at the walk and trot and it felt decent. We also played with leg yields and they were better today too. Our canter departs are getting much better, as is the canter. We also played with the obstacles and she did quite well with the drums.. I rode her shoulders with my outside rein which helped a lot! We did the switch cup (without touching the cup, but trot in, halt, and reinback) and while the reinback was hollow, it was straight and she didn't knock the stan...

  Poor Lyric. My delicate little flower. We had planned to go to Charlie Elliott today and ride with Laura and Jacel. I told Lyric this morning that we were going for a fun trail ride and it would be relaxing and nice. LIES!!! All lies!! Doh. Poor girl.    We went to pick Laura and Smarty up because her husbands truck was in the shop so he took hers. Not a big deal.. she's only 15 minutes away from CE. We picked her up and headed out. Jacel and Monica were there so we all got tacked up. There was a couple parked next to us with western horses and when I unloaded Lyric he was like "Holy cow.. is she 18 hands? She's huge!!". Yes sir.. but not 18 hands. Ha ha. But her butt next to Smarty's butt was HUGE. Ha ha. I forgot to get a photo though of them in the trailer. We got tacked up and headed out.   For whatever reason, everyone was a little jazzed up when we started out and Smarty and Piper got in the front and then Lyric and Moose were both a little panicky about g...

  Ugh... we're so over this weather!! It's miserable!! It's so humid. Soooo soooo humid! And hot, but more so so humid. I was supposed to have 7 horses today and then a shockwave... but it turned into 3 horses and I forgot about the shochwave. Since it was so hot I decided to just leave it at the three and not add in extra patients and then maybe I could go home and ride! Ha! First... it was WAY too hot and humid after I finished with the three. And then, I had forgotten about the shockwave. And of course they were literally 5 minutes from each other... and she couldn't get off work and back in time.. So.. rather having scheduled the 3 for the end of the day and riding when it was (presumably) cooler, I was dumb. Oh well. At least she was only 20 minutes away, so I just came home and sat on the couch and ate lunch and cooled off and then went back out. When I did get home it had cooled off a tiny bit.. maybe.. kind of... sort of. Ha. But I wanted to ride dangit. So I di...