Winter Music

  Ahhh, sweet sunshine! Today was a lovely day. It started out super chilly with a temp of 29! The ground was still frosty when I had to pull blankets and leave! Eeeks. I left Dan and Lyric in 100 grams and tossed a ton of hay. But I'm glad I did what I did because by 11 am it was warm and almost hot in the sun. The sun was shining and there was no wind, so.. it was quite pleasant. I didn't get home from work until 3 pm and when I went to get them, both of them were a bit warm and just starting to get sweaty under their clothes. Sorry kids!!  I rode Lyric first in case I ran out of time since she didn't get ridden Tuesday and is showing this weekend. She was good! (Maybe it's just the sunshine putting me in a better mood). We did some walk warm up and she was reactive about it but she did move her shoulders and then her haunches. We did a shorter ride and practiced some of the test moves and she was good. We managed to get a good bit of a more balanced horse and rider. ...

 rode at home. meh... some good moments... 

  Today was a good day! (And then the devil tried to ruin it and get in my head... grrrr).  We had signed up for a XC lesson with Waylon. I was originally planning to bring Dan because it seems like everytime Jacel rides with him she's jumping 4.5 feet! But since Dan is still lame... I asked to switch to the beginner novice group. And then it was supposed to be raining all day. Yuck. But luckily.. it changed to raining all night long but stopping at 9 am and they were actually right. And they changed the scheduled to start at 10 so we were able to get tacked up and ride without getting rained on. Yay! And the footing on XC wasn't too bad at all. Especially at the level we were doing. But because of the weather, a few people canceled so it ended up just being me and Kelda in our lesson. Which is fantastic because Lyric LOVES Blue. Well, everyone loves Blue but Lyric met him at the Jessica Borther Harris clinic at Falconwood and he walked with us and helped her calm down, so it ...

  The sun came out and it wasn't too terribly cold. We had a pretty good ride. She's starting to understand how to bend around my left leg and move to the left. A hair. Baby steps! We mostly just worked on even connection with a soft feel but we also did some canter transitions. Good girl! Even with the scary deer. 

 XC lesson after not doing any XC stuff since RRP, unless you count hopping over that two jumps while larking and the creeks. But even then, that was only one small log on the ground and one jump.  SOOOO Good! Feral ish trail ride first. a bit on edge and hollow the entire time. ended in XC field and a bit feral there. warmed up at trot, which then turned into a canter which I didn't ask for.... snorting fire breathing canter.... but we survived. warmed up trotting over log... super. progressed to small coop and then BN coop. Good girl actually. progressed to a lovely ride. she became more ridable and we got braver and trusted each other more. Occasionally neither of us knew whether to add or go for it and sometimes we both picked different things but we mostly managed to be smoothly together. two stops..once at the novice ditch trotting to it... that's okay, trotted the baby ditch and then she was fine. Another stop at the BN maybe novice cabin.. (which actually I think was o...

 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 ...

  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...