How About Them Broncos?!

May I just say, 17-10 win over TCU that came down to the last few seconds? Yes!! This is what I love about football, particularly Boise State.

Ahem.

More directly relevant to my life, Izzy and I ventured to the indoor yet again today. Our lesson Friday ended up not really being a lesson, because Izzy was not happy being by herself. She was galloping and bucking and acting nutty, so Cathy brought in a quiet horse that she needed to ride and gave me some pointers in between schooling the other horse.

Note: I work to pay for lessons, so it's not like there was money wasted or she was disrespectful of "my time". We were just doing what was best for Izzy at that point in time. Plus, Cathy's way more confident in my riding and intuition than I am, so she's pretty sure I'll just be fine.

Anyways. She had us do some spiral in/spiral out and bend/counter bend exercises to get Izzy focused and responsive. We didn't canter, but we had some excellent trot work in which Izzy was light and soft in my hands and pushing from behind while using her back. Lovely, lovely moments.

Today, my usual lessoner friend was back, so we were just going along. It's a symbiotic relationship; Izzy keeps the lesson horse calm, which allows the lessoner to get the most out of her lesson, and I get some time to ride. I moved Izzy in from the pasture this past weekend because it was raining pretty hard, and she doesn't have shelter out there. As a result, her brain was kind of gone. She's much better mentally when she gets to wander around the pasture. She was a nutcase while tacking up; she'd try to kick the other horse, then spin around and almost kick e, then try to bit chunks off the hitching post to relieve stress.

I bowed to the obvious, and decided that we would probably just have a lunging day today, but at least she'd get some of this nervous energy out of her system. She was better while we were walking over to the arena. Once we got there, I took her to the far end and we just did transitions, over and over. Lots of trot/canter/trot, to keep her working and focusing and let her blow through some steam. When she settled a little, I introduced her to shorten/lengthen within the trot, which we hadn't really done before on the lunge. She seemed to pick up on it pretty well.

After 20 minutes or so, I decided to get on. We'd lunged on both ends and she wasn't spooking or careening around, so we would probably be ok.

She was. We did more of what we did in our lesson, and she did some really nice work. We still have our sticky spots, but overall, she's coming around really nicely. Plus, that feeling of comfort and relaxation that we first achieved outside a couple weeks ago is still here. What a good day.