Engaged!!

Today was a day... I'm all in my head today. Or maybe the devils' trying to get in my head. I don't know. I slept in a little. Mike went to ride his motorcyle and was gone all day. So maybe I'm a little bit annoyed that I only have one horse to ride. Luckily Funny seems pretty comfy without her shoe, so hopefully she won't abscess. Her bandage is still intact. :) Dan seems to be behaving for his "rest" after his injection. He's been grazing or standing around all day. Just walking or standing. But yeah... only one horse to ride after being gone for a week and then working and I have the whole day free.. and next weekend I'll have my biopsy on Thurdsay so who knows if I'll feel up to riding. And by then, Mike will want to hang out again. So yeah.. a little cranky about that. But it's also so stinking hot! And humid. Actually, today was a little overcast and gloomy so it was much cooler, but the humidity was unreal. Excessive. Oppressive. Ridiculous. The weather said no rain, although it sure looked like it. I decided to just ride her at home. I thought about hauling her to Ashland but I'm going to do that tomorrow. And.. I have an arena.. and it's even mostly empty right now, so I might as well use it. Plus that saves me gas and time and I need to finish bush hogging and had big plans for doing other things with my free day.... So we rode at home.

And it was hot. Despite the clouds, it was still hot. Poor Lyric. We walked up to the arena and did some walking in hand. I did turn on the haunches and rein back. Then we jogged half a lap. It's hot! I got on and we took a long walk warm up... did some leg yields, some shoulder in, some haunches in, and some stretching. She actually did haunches in left much better today than she has in the past. Yay for that. I paid attention to my body and my weight aids. Then we trotted. She wasn't great. And she lost her hind end multiple times today. But we eventually got better and we finished quite nicely. We did manage some decent trot work and I was able to use the sitting trot as an aid for her too. She got a nicer trot when I sat. So yay! Maybe she was just more strung out than I realized today?? We got some nice canter transitions and while the first canter felt awful... once I sat up and lifted her back with my core, the canter almost immediately transformed into a nice canter. Ah... noted. Then after that, the canters were pretty decent. 

We finished up with some nice trot work both directions. It definitely helps her tracking left when I position my body to turn left. I also rode her shoulder fore tracking left today. I wanted to push her to the right with my left leg because she felt like she was falling in. But, when I rode shoulder fore, she straightened herself. I also made sure my weight was in the outside (right) stirrup and my core was pointing left. And maybe my body weight had shifted slightly to the outside too. It also helped her get more even in the connection in the reins too. 

We got a nice trot both ways with good bend and called it quits. Except, I did make her do the WE gate once too. She did good. Not as smooth as Dan but still quite good and brave. 

We hacked back home and then she got a bath and I scrubbed her cannon crud. And then they got to relax the whole rest of the day. She even got adjusted just before dinner. She gave me some good releases in her poll so hopefully that will help with some of the head twist we had at times today in our ride. Her back didn't feel too bad though, but that pelvis was very lopsided! As usual. I probably ought to just adjust her left AS and right PI every time I ride to be honest. If I can remember, I will.