Yesterday was gorgeous. Sunny, 60f outside, almost no wind... and I was stuck inside feeling miserable. I guess that's not entirely true. I went to my lesson yesterday morning. I was feeling awful, but when one has once weekly lessons, one always shows up. ;-) I got Izzy ready. I contemplated lunging, and realized that the amount of energy it required was about equal to that of staying on for one good spook. Since I had limited energy, I decided to gamble on the spook. (I never considered an option that included more than one spook. Hmmm.)
Izzy was amazing. Cathy's comment was that she was matching my energy output, because she just ambled around. She wasn't incredible; she wasn't round, she could have been more balanced, you know, that sort of thing. But. She didn't spook. She didn't act silly. She just let me ride her around and was really sweet. We did jump a bit and she was fabulous!! She's still figuring out where her feet go in front of the jump, but she only knocked it down twice and she's so athletic that it really isn't even an effort for her. (This is me, swooning).
Today was a different story. The weather changed, the rain came in, it's cold, and now I'm operating at about 60% strength instead of the 35% I had yesterday. I (wisely) turned Izzy out before riding and she galloped and bucked like a maniac. When she was done, I rode. We worked for a really long time on getting her to listen to my seat. She is getting better. We did lots of walk/halt/back/halt/walk type transitions to make sure she understood what I wanted. Then we moved on to trot/halt/trot transitions. When she was responding nicely, I started using that same idea to rebalance her without actually halting. It took a while; at first she would try to just run on her forehand, but we worked through that by actually making her stop and back up when she did that.
When I had her going nicely, we went through both of our tests. I have them memorized, and she was decent-ish. I guess that's good enough for now. Here's to better health for tomorrow...
Hope you get to feeling better SB.
ReplyDeleteI have a riding lesson scheduled today, but what do you know, it is about to thunder storm...
This puts me at 0-5 for riding lessons actually ridden vs. scheduled.
BLAST
Feel better - it's great that you were able to get all that work done even when not feeling great!
ReplyDeleteDear me, I hope you feel better in time for the show. You will need to be better than 60% to score what you are both capable of--at least 70%! *G*
ReplyDeleteI admire your determination and am most pleased that Ms. Izzy reacted to your state of health and behaved like a good pony. (I think she likes you. *G*)
I'm glad that Izzy gave you a break when you felt really bad..that is helpful. Hope you feel better soon! Get good rest.
ReplyDeleteI hope you feel much better by now! So nice when our horses tune in and take care of us. And vice versa, as you did the next day!
ReplyDeleteSometimes I really really love an amble.
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