I woke up cranky today. Yet again, I did not sleep well. My neck was aching. I was exhausted from yesterday (adjusted 13 horses, 10 hours on my feet, 12.5 hr day) and I woke up with a brewing migraine. Plus, I had to get up early because the people who were coming to spray my pastures said they'd be there between 7:30 and 8 am.. and then Dan decided to paw at the gate at 6:30 am... And then the weed sprayer guys didn't show up til at least 8:45. I had to leave at 8:40 to get to my dentist appointment. And the horses were cranky because I had to lock them in their stalls. But... I read a friends post about being grateful and enjoying the moments and I tried. I was appreciative of the things but I was still a little cranky and short tempered. And to be fair.. my head hurt. I'm tired of my head hurting. I'm tired of being tired. And I wanted to do things but my head hurt. But.. I ended up going out to clean stalls real quick and then I decided I could put the skin medicine on Funny. Then since I had her out, we practiced trailer loading. And then, the guys said that they didn't need me to stick around, so... I put Funny back and grabbed Dan and we headed out to Ashland. It was a beautiful day, so... :)
We met Peri and Cuart and Kelli and Marvin and I was still a little cranky. We all did a little dressage so I took Dan up to the small arena to work on my position from my lesson. It wasn't as hard as I expected it to be. I mean... I'm sure I wasn't getting it perfectly, but I felt like I was making a little bit of progress and Dan stayed fairly in front of my leg. Although I probably was kicking more than I realized. We practiced collecting the canter and it's hard, because.. in some ways I feel like I should reward him for hearing my seat... even if he thinks my seat is saying break to the trot instead of shorten the canter... because.. it probably is! Honestly, he's way better than me. I tried to not get frustrated and did better than I have in the past, but... I was a little more cranky in the beginning of my ride. But I got better.. my headache went away and that helped too, and I started realizing that I had to change things rather than expecting Dan to read my mind or do things differently than we've been doing them just because I suddenly decided to change the rules. And that helped me be a little less frustrated and more appreciative of the effort. We did get some nice canter collections! We also got some nice canter to walk to canters. AND... I feel like I'm becoming more aware of my body position and aids and thus hopefully Dan can become more correct in his gaits because I'm not fumbling around sending mis-cues. It does give me hope for the change. We're getting almost to the point of him only taking one walk step before he picks up the other lead on our figure 8's. And more importantly I feel like my aids are getting more correct. Which... sure, maybe he's just anticipating and I'm going to mess up the change, but... I feel like once he gets the hang of it... and gets rewarded... and I can tighten up my aids.. then we can try it in other spots and start to put the aids to the change correlation better. We'll see.
Oh, and... guess what we got today?!?! A right lead canter half pass!! Like, a legit one!! I mean, I think it was legit! It was even better than the trot half pass!! :) :) The left lead one wasn't so good, but... I really felt like the right lead one was legit. And when I asked him to straighten, he broke to the trot, but that's okay. Because it was lovely downward and... he heard me! Which means, had I asked for a swap, he was balanced enough to maybe do it. Once we do those. :)
Anyways! Yay!! It was a good ride. So then we went for a hack. We went to the lake first so that they could all get a drink. Of course Dan took a few big sips before everyone else got in and then just about the time Marvin started drinking, Dan started splashing. Poor Marvin! He can't ever drink in peace! I went to take a photo and ... it happened!! I dropped my phone in the lake!!! I just watched it fall.... and then sink. It was deep enough that I was going to have to go in for it. But... my boots! My pants.... Oh well. I didn't have a choice. So I hopped off and retrieved it and then got back on. I was soaked! It was up well past the tops of my boots. Oh well, at least it was warm and no one had pooped in the lake! And my phone still worked!! I even took pictures after :) YAY! We had a nice long hack and then Dan got bemered while I acupunctured Marvin and we all chatted. Ahhhhh.... I love these days! Sunshine. Good Ride. Riding with friends. Yep... God is good. I am blessed.
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