Fitness and Fun

 Today was fun! I took Lyric to Ashland for a ride this morning so that Mike and I could hang out this afternoon. Laura had told me I could try her bit, so I figured now was a good time. 

 

I ended up just parking at the gray barn because it was easier to do the bit swap that way and Caroline didn't mind. We hacked out to the XC field. There was a big group that had booked it at 10:30 so I was trying to get there before they did so we could play a little. I wanted to try out that bit. We did manage to beat them so we did some trotting to warm up. She was a little fresh and.... I'm not quite sure I like that bit. She felt more braced and inverted than she does with the elevator. Granted... I'm sure the elevator creates some "false" rounding. But I can't decide if that's better because she's not in bad biomechanics or worse because it's just covering up holes. Anyways... she was a bit animated so we trotted a log and then she cantered so we just cantered. Again... hard to control her shoulder today and she was a bit more inverted. We got some decent canters though and hopped over a few jumps. And then she was happy and rarin' to go so I just kept jumping. She was a bit quick today and strong. But also, maybe that's just because I'm so used to her being backed off. She did peek at one, but... she jumped all of them today and all but one were pretty much out of stride. There was only the one "peek and process" jump. We didn't jump the big ones because... no vest... no trainer... no one around... but we did jump a few we hadn't jumped before or in awhile. The hanging log by the ditches for instance. We also jumped the brush fence and then the bigger log stack. Whoo hoo! No big solid tables though. Darnit... And I sort of chickened out with the ramp but I suspect she probably would have gone over it. By then the big group had shown up so we did a few more on our way down to the lake so that we didn't get in their way. Plus I was a little afraid that they would get Lyric riled up and I didn't want to ruin what we had accomplished. But so far... still a good XC school!

 

So then we splashed in the lake for a minute and then went for a hack. I was aiming for hills because her stifle was catching hard core yesterday. We trotted the path up to "squallor hollow" and then trotted twix (or tween). Then we walked a bit and then I asked her to gallop on the big stretch at the hay field on the gallop track. She picked up a quick canter and then... she actually stretched out into a gallop! It wasn't as big of a difference as when Dan does it, but it was definitely another gear. She's pretty quick too! It was fun!!! We only went all out for about 15 seconds because then we hit the turn. But it was fun! I think she enjoyed it too. 

 

We mostly walked the rest of the way home as we had done a fair amount. It was a great ride and we accomplished some hills, some fitness, some jumping, some field work, and tested out the bit. I'm definitely not going to go buy one immediately but I would like to try it again. And we enjoyed some beautiful weather and scenery! This has been such a warm and dry Fall. Luckily the humidity has gone down and it's been quite nice, but we could use some rain.