Barn Pixie

no icon for the old man yet - I was thinking Aulde Manne in my head

I did stop and feed him peppermints, having been told he is hard to catch, I figured I'd get in good with his pasturemate and then he'd eventually come see what he could scrounge from me as well. It worked pretty well. And simply offering peppermints and walking away again made his brain buzz. So when I came back from my lesson to hop on for a short ride to make sure I could do it by myself, he didn't even try to duck out on me. I have carrots for the next time.

Awesome awesome lesson, with the blonde tank. He was distracted and resistant, and Lani gave me a couple tools for getting him into a frame and keeping him there, and we had a canter that was awesome. Round, bright and light in the shoulders, upright around the corners.... it made me giddy.

And then I went and got the same canter on Bully, and it made me giddy all over again.

Thank you so much, all you cheerful enabling horse owners. I did have horses as a child while growing up, so I do understand the whole vet/farrier/board trifecta. You are completely correct that a lease would be a good idea, or even a half lease.

However - the job was not there, so no horse. I do kind of need finances to offset the equine, it wouldn't be something I could exactly sneak into the household budget. I think, having not had this particular horse drop into my lap, that I will continue with Plan A which is Find A Teacher, and assume everything else will flow from that.

In other news, the lessons continue, and the remembered skills are returning, as, unfortunately, are the bad habits (holding too hard with the hands, looking down, hunching forward) although the number of moments of forward lean has been aggressively reduced, mostly courtesy of yoga (my yoga teachers say "lead with your heart" and "side body long, inner body bright" and "BREATHE" and it kind of follows me around in the rest of life).

I rode another aged mare this time. She was Arab, with vertical neck evasion and tendency to quickness. It took the whole lesson to get her to come down into my hands and bend around my inside leg. Actually what it took was a long hard shoulder-in to the left, with tiny circles when she was falling apart. What I forget about short horses is how tiny a circle they can turn, so 10 m is not yet small enough. Also once I carried (without using) a whip she moved off my leg much more handily and forward into my hands better.

We spent a lot of time doing bending things at the trot - big circles, smaller circles, 3 and 4 loop serpentines, leg yield off the rail to the quarter line and back, and these shoulder(s)-in(s) (how DO you pluralize those?) We had nicer bends to the right, but she drifted out more. And two odd things: The first was near instantaneous down transitions, it didn't feel like a hollowing, but more like a cow pony stop - head and haunches down, back up, almost skid into it. I couldn't get forward motion into the down transitions for most of the lesson - we might have had one nice one. The other was that she had no speed regulator. Most horses get a nice trot going, and if I stay steady, so do they. She had none of that. I felt I was either trying to slow or encourage her for the entire lesson. It was tricky to balance between keeping her steady and letting her roll along - telling a horse All The Time faster,slower,here,there,now,no,maybe,go,stop gets wearing on both the horse and rider. They need a break to just carry themselves, and the rider needs a break to see if any of the corrections have been heard. But in and around that, we had no two consecutive minutes going the same speed. Probably my fault.

I didn't think to ask how much of her unevenness between tracking left and right was due to my unevenness tracking left and right. I'll have to think about that over the next ride.

The riding muscles! FTW! As one friend says, when the riding muscles hurt, at least you know you are/have been Riding, and it feels like a huge win, even when it is, well, sore muscles.

Lesson today, first since May or June last spring. Ancient gray arab (!) mare, mostly knew what she was doing. While not the schoolmaster that Garcell* is  or Nishy** we had some moments. Her preference was head in the air and hollow, plus slow or quick to avoid additional work, though we had some much better moments after warming up and practicing some leg yielding and spiraling circles in and out. Her canter was astoundingly uneven - much smoother to the right than the left, and felt like falling into the center once per stride. There were some jumps set up in the ring making figures difficult. I never took the same line twice for changes of rein or serpentines or anything!

The teaching was fine. Not brilliant, but workmanlike. She caught some of my habitual issues (sit up, look where you are going) but didn't speak to some things I think were not so good. I tend to be too busy with my hands, and hold too long and too hard. For this mare it made less difference than it might for others, but I need to push my elbows forward and soften my hands much more of the time. I was working on dragging a lot of yoga to class, especially the standing poses - balance weight in the feet, straight through the back, float the head, lead with the heart.

The barn had a nice vibe - filled to overrunning with all kinds of other animals. There were two angora goats and a black sheep in a pen, fistfuls of chickens wandering around, an orphan lamb in the tack room and a different cat every where I looked. I will take four lessons and see how I feel about the place and the teacher. the horses looked calm and cheerful. There was a stallion there, who was cheerful and kind and easily handled by his owner with a broken foot.

I came home and fell asleep, for two hours. I'm better now, I guess.

Happy Pi Day (3.14) - also Einstein's birthday - we have apple and blueberry pie for supper.



*first barn, 16 yo big gray rhinelander gelding that had been 4th level in dressage at one point
**same barn, 17 yo morgan gelding bred at UMass, 14.3 deep chestnut, had gone Training level combined training and 2nd level dressage