Lots to be thankful for

 Except for the pivo. That thing drove me bananas today. Ha! Happy Thanksgiving!! Today was a good day. Mike and I slept in and then after I fed the critters we had beignets for breakfast! Yum! Then after I worked on Dan's book for an hour or so, Mike went for a ride on his motorcycle and I took Dan to Ashland. When I got back, after a quick lunch, I got Lyric out. 

She got a bemer session and then we did her core exercises at the trailer. She was good but she is definitely so tight in her neck and poll. She struggles to reach down to her fetlocks and even knees on the sides. That neck needs to grow baby girl! But we'll keep at it and hopefully we can get her stretchier and more relaxed. So then I tacked up and we walked up to the arena. We did a tiny bit of pillar work and then I lunged her for a short stint. She's getting good at lunging... she's relaxing pretty much immediately now and stretching nicely. However, she's still tight in her back (or somewhere) as she's not tracking up at all. She's at least a full hoofprint between where her hindfoot lands and her frontfoot leaves. Granted, she is a little sluggish and not animated on the lunge, but still. 

 

I decided to try the pivo today and got that all set up. And then I spent about 1/4 of my ride yelling at pivo because it was staring off in the distance... or fixated on Fleck in the pasture... or just... turned into the corner. Come on PIVO!! Get it together. We're over here... ugh. I tried to keep telling myself to focus on the ride but it's hard because when it gets good, I want to see if it looks as good as it feels. But I did try. 

 

Our ride started out not great. She was crooked again and twisting and even felt lame a bit. It wasn't consistent and it was subtle, so I almost wonder if maybe she's either a little foot sore from getting trimmed the other day or a little sore from where she had a little nick on her cannon bone that swelled up. I'm definitely going to keep an eye on her though. So anyways... I remembered that I had read something about riders that are collapsing their right rib cage and dropping the right shoulder and are sitting crooked. It said that the fix was to move your seats so that your left seatbone was centered over midline of your saddle and to let yourself fall into that right hole. It seems counterintuitive, but I tried it and I really think it helped!! I wonder if it's more that it just centers us but because we're soooo crooked, we feel that we're now on the opposite side of our crookedness. But I do think it made me sit up straighter and more even. And for whatever reason, likely because my body posture isn't influencing hers poorly, Lyric felt like she was straighter in her body, straighter in her shoulders and barrel, and even straighter in her poll and not twisting as much. And while she did get above the contact a few times, it felt like she was evenly out of the contact as opposed to never wanting to get off that one left rein. So I played with it. I tried to sit my butt to the right the entire ride and I focused on riding her shoulders and barrel straight. I stopped worrying so much about trying to fix her head with my hands and even stopped worrying about having to keep an outside rein connection. When she was tracking right, I felt like every time I took a slight hold of the outside rein, to ride inside leg to outside rein... she would twist. But if I pushed my outside hand slightly forward and allowed her to reach, she would straighten out. I mean... let's ignore the fact that I've been trying to ride "classical" for awhile and keep telling myself to go back to what Gerd taught me. Ride to the light and give to the heavy. But, I got so caught up in things that I quit doing that. And I was so, and still am to a degree, caught up on her not being braced and relaxing her underneck, that I was getting too handsy again. Sigh.. And today wasn't great. We had a lot of ugly moments and a alot of bracing. But we also had much more moments of even soft connection than before. And perhaps the connection was not truly a connection. Maybe I'm just floating the reins to her. And I'm sure one could argue that because of that she's not using her back correctly and is on the forehand. And yes.. the videos do show that she's on the forehand. But she's also quite literally on the forehand. She's butt high still. So.. I don't know. In my heart, I feel like todays ride was better than the last multiple rides, even if it's not going to make the trainers happy. And maybe it's because it's not right. Maybe I do need to have more of a connection or more outside rein. But for now... I feel like maybe this is just where we need to be. ??? We'll see how I feel tomorrow or next week. 

But I think we got some decent work at least at times.