Barn Pixie

Thursdays are insanely busy. I could change it, except most of it is good, even dropping into bed at the end of it.

Thursdays start with a yoga/pilates class from my South Boston guru (more on her another time) which really is just to get warmed up. I am not sure how much yoga helps my riding but it fells like a lot.

I rode Kaboose for almost an hour - she of the training and good nature. I am still trying to improve our canter departures, because it feels like no matter how together and light she is when I ask, she flows through my hands like water and buries her nose and runs into it. We got into a giant pulling match before I stopped doing that. I held with my shoulder blades but let her have my hands, and that got her both lighter in my hands and lighter in the shoulders. From that we got some better canters, but I still have so far to go.

Instead of riding Ruby, the baby, I followed good advice from every corner and got ready for lungeing again. This time we had a curcingle and side reins, and a soft lunge rein with no chain. I prefer to run the rein in the bit and over their head to the far side, so pulling (on either of our parts) won't slip the bit through. Lendon says it is OK, and lacking a proper lungeing cavesson it works well enough. And then we lunged. She did pretty well. We can whoa, walk and trot in both directions, smoother to the left. Up transitions are easier than down. There was no tension in the side reins, so I have to get those to a point where she has some contact (she is so SHORT!!) I didn't work on canter at all. What I did do was remembered from working with a Thoroughbred back in college. I tried to get her to make her trot slower and then faster and then slower, without breaking out of the trot. She seems to have done that before, or to be exceedingly intelligent. Both are likely. Then we tried making the walk slower and faster, and trying to get her halts solid at the end of the line, without turning in. the halts are definitely a work in progress, but she is comfortable with slower and faster, and I think I'll work on polishing that understanding for the next several lessons, both lungeing and under saddle.

The rest of the day was spent driving to Brattleboro for Circus classes, Aerin's followed by family circus, and making it home before I crashed.

I realized I have been accounting the complexity of the day by how many different pairs of pants I wear. Today was yoga pants, britches, jeans and back to yoga pants for circus. Most days max out at two pairs of pants, Tuesdays are three, only Thursdays have 4.