Winter Music

 Argh.. not how I wanted to spend our last ride of the year. I was cranky and had another headache... maybe the flu still?? Should have just lunged...  did lunge to start. and took a minute but got nice and lofty and bouncy with her nose down to the ground.  got on... did some walk. haunches in a bit easier. tried some shoulder fore too. then did trot and canter work and it wasn't bad but... just struggling to get her to bend around my left leg. she wants to be so counter bent in her body. I don't know if it's me? her? both? got some good canter departs though. tried half passing in the walk to see if I could get her to move her haunches/hindend left while bent left. NOPE. not able to do it.  got off after a decent trot traccking left... not quite in the outside rein only but at least some decent contact on btoh reins  Then tried to do half pass in hand. Hard to coordinate the aids. She got frantic and just exploded instead of actually trying to think. So... we took a breat

  They all can't be lovely rides right?! Today wasn't bad... it just... wasn't as good as the other day. But, that's okay. We did have some good moments and she was forward. She definitely does not like me waving my hands around... everytime I tried to wipe my nose, she squirted. So of course I had to stop and wave my hands around. That might be partly why our ride wasn't as good. Doh. We had some nice canter departs today and some nice canter to trots. And we had some good moments too!    Hopefully we'll get to ride Saturday or Sunday or both. She gets her feet done tomorrow and we'll check x-rays again. She still feels like she's falling haunches left, but won't go haunches left for real when bent around my inside leg. And she fell out behind a few times today again. Hard...like felt like she left a leg in Texas fell out behind.    But she let me catch her today to pull her blanket and to ride and she didn't run when I went to catch Dan, so.. y

I'm not sure what was in the air but Lyric was feeling FRISKY the other day. She was messing with everyone... Fleck, Funny, Dan. Hee hee. I wondered if she was going to let me catch her. But she did!!! I'm guessing it was the warmer than usual weather with the wind blowing in from the impending rain storm. It felt.... stormy!         But like I said, she let me catch her and was quite a good girl. She was slightly sweaty when I tacked her up. It was warm but the breeze had a bit of a bite to it. I was wondering how she was going to be undersaddle, but she was good. She was even good walking to the arena. We did our pillar work on the way up there and then I tried to do haunches in in hand, but... that's tricky. I can't quite figure out how to keep the bend and move the haunches, so... we more did a weird leg yield thing. But hey.. moving the hind end is moving the hind end. But I didn't dwell on it because I didn't have a ton of time.    I got on and we did a bi

We had a decent ride today! She was definitely hotter today. I did have the whip with me but I don't think it was because of the whip. I just think she was more forward today. I didn't really use the whip until later on in the ride. And even then it was more of a suggestion than anything. I mostly wanted to get her used to it.    We rode our usual rides and then I started to think... she feels so haunches left all the time. Perhaps I should try to focus on haunches right and haunches left, shoulders right and shoulders left, to see if I could get her more maneuverable. So we tried that. Shoulder in was tough but we managed a shoulder fore. Haunches right was pretty doable. (Again, all super subtle). Haunches left was HARD! I could not figure out how to get her to move her barrel off my left leg in order to bend around it and allow the haunches to fall in to the left. She kept wanting to counterbend, and lean. She could sort of do it if she could throw her head to the right.. ba

 This morning we had Sara come to do Fleck's feet and trim Funny. I left the blankets on the ponies because it was chilly. After Sara left the plan was to go XC schooling with Dan, and I had to pick up Laura and Smartie so I was in a bit of a hurry to make it on time. I ran inside to use the bathroom and let the dogs back inside. The horses were all just outside the barn eating hay. When I came back out they had migrated out halfway to the back... Ugh. I walked out with a halter and cookies and pulled Fleck's blanket.  He was actually still near the barn. But then Lyric saw me heading towards her. She spun, kicked up her heels and galloped off. NOOOOO... naughty girl!! Ugh. I grabbed Funny's blanket and luckily Dan heard me mention cookies so he didn't take off. He let me catch him. I started to walk back to the barn with him and was calling Lyric. She went screeching across the pasture, bucking and kicking. GIRL!!! bad life choice. I tried a few more times as she came

  We had a lesson with Samantha again. Rode Lyric first in case I couldn't catch her. But next time, I'll do Dan first so I can warm him up and get him in front of my leg. But Lyric and I did our walk warm up and two circles of trot before Samantha got there. I did put her back in her old metal fager bit and had as good of a ride as the other day. She immediately was softer in the bridle and not as inverted. And definitely not as dropped in her back as she was in some of the other bits.  Anyways... we picked up the trot and she was a bit of a slug today so I had to keep egging her forward. We focused on spiral in and spiral out in the trot circles to help get her into the outside rein. Lots of giving of the inside rein. Samantha pointed out that when tracking left, my outside (right) hand was too far forward, so I needed to bring it back so that my hands were even. Hmmm... odd. because my brain had me thinking that my right shoulder was turned to the outside of the circle, so I

 So... today Lyric made good choices. LOTS of good choices. And a few not so good ones. Ha ha! It was windy today, but sunny.  Late this morning (because yay... free day off work for some reason! Oh.. because we were supposed to be at Hunting Island but sadly...we're not) I went to pull their neck covers off. It was still chilly and windy but the sun was warm. I got Fleck and Funny naked and then went to pull Lyrics neck cover. She let me come up to her and then after I undid the first strap she thought she should run off because I might decide to ride her or something. So she started to move off. I tried to stop her and she plowed on ahead so then I yelled at her as she took off. Well.. dingbat... her neck piece was hanging off the side and scared her. Ha ha. Serves you right missy! She ran around a bit and I just ignored her. Luckily Dan made a good life choice and didn't join in so I was able to grab him and pull his clothes. I put their blankets back in the barn and by then