She listened!
Ahhhh, today was a much better day. We had a XC lesson at Ashland with Jacel. We were riding with Laura and her new guy. Unfortunately because errands took forever, I was running a bit later than I wanted so I was tacking up quick. And Laura had walked up and was talking with me, so... I forgot her boots. But I didn't realize it at first. Laura and I had hacked out to the XC field and Lyric was already so much calmer and chill. We trotted around and neither horse really cared and Lyric was much straighter too! Then Laura wanted to canter first while we stood in case her new guy was stupid, so we did. And Lyric was content to just stand. Then we cantered and she was chill. Yay! Then Jacel showed up and we talked. I told her about the last few rides and basically that we were all on the same page. I needed to keep Lyric balanced and not get off balance myself and I needed to sit and be firm and she needed to go. Laura wanted to go first getting started so she went. And then I realized I didn't have Lyrics boots! Ack! I figured I should definitely put them on since she was kicking her fetlocks, so we trotted back up to the trailer to get them. Sorry Laura!!! The good news is that she trotted over the rocks even without flinching. Hmmm... interesting, as even in the full set of glue ons she was mincy and touchy walking over the rocks. Noted... noted.
So we headed back and luckily Laura's new guy was fine in our abscence. We warmed up over some smaller stuff and Lyric was sane and a good girl. The very first fence she sort of hesitated a tiny bit but still jumped it fine. Jacel told me that I needed to be much more proactive though when she questions. Because it was very good of her to jump that and she could have easily have said no because when she questioned, I didn't go "yes, go" and instead went "meh... if you want to". So good for her, bad for me. We did a few more and it was much better, including some bigger ones!
Then she had us come downhill over the beginner novice coop, which was sizable for us, especially downhill. And Lyric stopped and propped hard 2 strides out. Hard enough that I almost came off. So I smacked her with the crop a few times and got mad. And to be fair.. it was a legit stop. She wasn't super balanced coming down the hill and I wasn't quite in the back seat enough and then when she started to prop three strides out I wasn't sitting back enough and didn't insist she go so she propped hard and then I had nothing. We came back again and I stayed in the back seat and rode harder and she jumped it fine. Yay! We then carried on and even jumped the new beginner novice roll top/bench combo. Both ways!! Good girl!
We headed back with Laura and I decided to walk with her back towards the gray barn and then we peeled off and hacked around the little lake by ourselves before going home. I had totally forgotten that Patrick was coming this evening to check Dan and by the time I remembered, we had already spent a good extra 15 minutes hacking. Ooops. I managed to get her hosed off and loaded up and Patrick texted saying he was 15 minutes away. ooops.. I'm 30! Oh well. He did wait til we got home to make sure that Lyric was still good. :) She is. And... I do wonder a little bit if some of our jumping issues were related to foot pain. It's possible. If she was that mincy over rocks compared to trotting happily over them now... maybe she didn't want to jump because it hurt to land. ??? I don't know. Not sure I'll ever really know, but... she does seem to feel better in feet in steel now. Hopefully she'll grow some sole soon!
Comments
Post a Comment