Sick Day

I woke up this morning and felt like I'd never gone to bed. Plus, now I have a sore throat and runny nose and a headache. :-(

The obvious course of action was to skip my run, get dressed, go riding, then come home for soup. Why, what else could I do?

I'm glad I did. I still feel like crap, but the ride was so worth it. Because Izzy was so quiet yesterday and we galloped around, I decided to forgo lunging and just warm her up with a long walk. It went really well. I focused on keeping her marching forward and let her stretch whenever she offered it. After 10 minutes or so, I picked her up and off we went. We're gearing up for a schooling show, so I wanted to work on transitions. At first, Izzy totally ignored my seat and would toss her head if I tried touching the reins in trot/walk transitions. I broke it down for her. We did walk/halt transitions. If she halted in a balanced and quiet way, we walked on. If not, I asked her to back until she gave (ie released tension and dropped her poll). It took a while and several times we had to back all the way down the short side of the arena, but she finally decided to co-operate.

After that, it was smooth sailing. We did walk/trot/canter transitions and she was lovely. We did trot/halt transitions. She can do them within a stride and she has a naturally square halt. Then we progressed to transitions within the trot; instead of actually halting, we'd do a half halt and practiced our shorten/lengthen trot. She has an amazing lengthen when she's balanced. We didn't actually practice our tests, but I don't think we need to. Plus, it helped me to find a good, quiet way to work through her initial resistance.

Win! Also, the schooling show was moved back from Wednesday to Friday. That gives us a little more time to get ready and means that our lesson is on for tomorrow and we get to JUMP again!

PS I'm 90% done pulling her mane and her fetlocks and bridle path are now trimmed. Behold the power of cookies! Seriously. She will stand still for anything if she has a treat to suck on.

PPS The mare has apparently opened a store under her registered name. I'm awaiting royalties.