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Wednesday, February 1, 2012

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.

7 comments:

  1. Well, not a totally crappy day if it was nice enough to ride outside!

    Audi sounds like some good experience for you. All these different horses are going to help your training skills once Izzy is ready to go again.

    Nice job with the "replacement" black mare. *G*

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  2. She's cute! Even with the goat hair!

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  3. Ahahaha I hated the circle of doom at the eventing barn I rode at...

    And she is very cute!

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  4. Musical ponies? I think I could be a fan of this game...

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  5. OOHH - she is cute! I am getting so partial to mares, also. And of course you can improve a horse!

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  6. Very pretty mare! My weakness is black horses. :D Glad you had fun with her. Hope the crappy-ness gets better soon.

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