Loving the Girls

This is Ms. Audi, a 15.2ish warmblood something cross. I think. Not really sure of her breeding.

Anyways, she's black and female, so she's right up my alley. I actually had a little jumping instruction on her yesterday, which was super fun. Stephanie had set up 'the circle of death' which is 4 obstacles evenly spaced around a 15 or 20 meter circle. Audi is green enough that we had alternating trot poles and crossrails, but she was super about the whole thing. She doesn't quite know how to canter a pole and isn't super straight, but she tries hard and is very honest.

Today we could actually ride outside (I KNOW OMG!!!!!) and I got Audi again. She likes a quiet rider, so I got on, and just sat very still. Give an aid, relax, ask a question, relax. Keep it simple for her. She's got a lot of bad training to overcome (another thing I seem to like, lol), so I kept the reins pretty long and loose and rode her forward to a very polite contact.

She has a cute trot and a lovely little canter, so we bopped around and warmed up. She was rather dull to my aids, which is hard to deal with in a horse that wants a quiet rider. To work on that, we did a bunch of walk/trot/walk transitions. I'd ask with the lightest aid possible, and stop as soon as she responded. By the end of the session, it just took a light touch to move up and a slight tightening of my core muscles to go back down.

I actually felt like I somehow helped to improve lil' Ms Audi. :-) That's a bright spot in an otherwise crappy day.