My riding has been inconsistent at best. All summer I made the 80-mile round trip to ride at least 4 days a week. My car has a lot of miles on it. But my horse felt broke, light, soft, responsive. It really felt like we were getting somewhere.
I'm not able to ride as much now that it's winter and crummy outside. I'm lucky if I get one good ride in a week.
It's not that my horse is disobedient by nature. I don't even think it's that she doesn't want to work anymore, or that she forgets lessons. I think it's that her body just isn't conditioned to cues how it used to be.
You know, muscle memory? Mine's suffered a lot, too.
You know what else you lose when you don't ride much? Confidence.
I don't worry much about my horse being naughty. She's not ever naughty for the sake of misbehavior. She is not out to get me, even though I'm sometimes out to get her. I try to remember that whenever I feel frustrated with the way things are going. Even when she is difficult, she isn't bad. She isn't doing it "on purpose".
The kind of confidence I'm talking about is the assurance that you are giving the right cue, and that your horse knows what that means.
It's all building muscle memory.
And I've lost a lot of that over the last couple of months.
Sandy face.
I did bring the hackamore out with me to the barn today, and we did a little riding in it, just playing around and getting comfortable with the opposite kind of pressure and the way it acts on the face. In hindsight, the best time to do all this would have been at the end of the ride, not the beginning. But that's something to store away for later.
We started on the line. She lunged for a few minutes in the smaller outdoor arena. She looked a little muscle sore from the other day but worked out of it quickly. After a few minutes she looked good. I was starting to feel hopeful that we would get somewhere today.
Played around in the hackamore and that was challenging for her. I switched to the snaffle after a few minutes and I immediately became aware of just how tuned in she is to it. And how reliant I am still on the reins for steering. Darn.
Unfortunately I had to ride in the large jumping outdoor since there was a lesson happening with four kiddos and four ponies all going crazy directions in the smaller arena we usually work in. The jumping arena was an obstacle course. All the jumps were blown down all over the place, and half the arena was still muddy and too slippery to ride in.
This translated into a pretty crummy space to ride.
We did our best to work around it, but today I had a freight train on my hands.
This is totally what I get for bragging about how awesome she works on a draped rein.
I hate riding with that much contact. It hurts. It hurts everyone. Chev wanted me to hold her up. She wanted to just lean on the contact and not have to think about balancing her own body. She was feeling a bit frantic from our harrowing ride the other day, she wanted to look at the school ponies, and she did not like the wind blowing in her face. She wanted to become a barrel racer.
You know that moment where you know people are watching you ride, and thinking to themselves, "Boy, that gal is having a tough time"?
That was totally happening to me.
After fifteen minutes of huffing and puffing around outside (both of us), and nearly getting blown off my horse, I decided it was a good idea to try the indoor arena again.
We walked up there.
And guess what?
She was a little nervous.
But she was so much better.
Only one poop pile this time instead of 10.
She shuffled her feet in the beginning.
But she listened. She caught on rapidly to the rules. She looked to me instead of the wind for clues.
After twenty minutes she was relaxing into a nice rising trot and staying at a walk whenever I asked. Granted, it was a damned energetic walk. But it was still a walk.
We did some trot pole exercises and tons of serpentines. We practiced unsticking her incredibly sticky right shoulder and ribcage. We stopped. We walked some more.
I dismounted after a great stop at the scary far end and she followed me quietly out of the arena.
So, that's progress.
By then the kiddos were done with their lesson and I wanted to work a little on our canter departs.
I also felt it would benefit her to just lope some big circles and get all the bunches out.
I have a pretty one-sided horse. I remember many years ago my instructors telling me every horse has a preferred lead, just as people are right- or left-handed. They even stick the preferred leg out in front of them when grazing or eating hay off the ground. You can teach them to be ambidextrous (and that is, indeed, the goal!) but they don't come out of the box that way.
My horse is in the majority. She is definitely "left handed".
Her left lead is balanced, cadenced, and lovely to ride. Which really means that the right side of her body is supple, relaxed, and strong, since it's the part that has to bend around for the left lead. The right hind is also where all the power for the left lead is created.
Her right lead is choppy, lopsided, and sort of feels like riding a different horse up front than behind. In her case this has to do with a lot of left side stiffness. She also has some sort of mysterious shoulder injury from when she was a 5 year old (vet and I guessed it was a spectacular wipe-out in the pasture, which she is wont to do), so her mobility is a little decreased on that side. At least, I can see it.
I put her in a big circle on her left lead.
My broke, draped-rein horse was suddenly back!
She felt great. Slow and happy.
I put her into her right lead, more challenging. She picked it right up and carried me along. It felt pretty good. She was elastic and bending through my leg.
We did a few big, swoopy loops, back to the left lead, rinse and repeat.
I kept expecting her to be tired, but she just seemed happy to stretch her muscles out.
I put her back into her right lead and disaster struck.
It's been a while since I've had one of those moments where I was sure I was coming off. You know what I'm talking about: time slows down incredibly, your mind thinks of what you could do, but your body is still too slow to do anything...
It was a major, catastrophic stumble. The edge of the far end of the arena just drops off about three feet before hitting the perimeter iron-cable fence. I had time to think about how much this was going to suck. I think I yelled out some expletive. And I cranked up on those reins.
I pulled my pony up off her stumbling knees and gave her some leverage to balance with. She threw a little buck out the back trying to get her feet organized, came out of it on the other lead, and off we went.
I was laughing at this point.
I eased her down and asked for the right lead again, which she took gracefully. We loped around a little bit, then we stopped, and we both aired up.
This is exactly why I never throw my reins entirely away. You never know when your horse might need a little help.
Not sure how I didn't just go over her head when she stumbled face first, but I think it was mostly being lucky enough to do the right things in the right order to save the situation. Total luck. She literally had one foot over the edge when we were able to regain balance and move on.
I was really proud of her, though. She could have come unglued. She's never tripped to her knees with a rider before. And given her past history, I think she handled it pretty damn calmly.
We both did, somehow.
We did a few more circles of canter, mostly so I could prove to her she really was great at it, and a good long walk cool-off.
So we ended on a great note today. I had my soft, giving, moderately-broke horse back.
She earned her sand roll and her carrots today.
In other news: my horse is officially winter fat...somehow she looks like a welsh pony in this photo, and is wondering why I stood her up so awkwardly. That fence behind her is 6'.
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