dancing horses

dancing horses

Friday, October 16, 2020

Taking Advantage

 I do enjoy watching Shanea ride Carmen. It opens my eyes to what is possible and shows her how to respond. It was important to me to take full advantage of the work Shanea had done. 

Monday the weather was much calmer.  I rode and Carmen was perfect. She went forward off the leg, was soft and listening. I was quite happy with our performance. 

I caught her spying on me when I was dragging the ring

Tuesday Julia came out to join us and we started with a hack. I've been working on Carmen's bravery out hacking so we started with her leading. At first she didn't want to head down to the woods but I sat up, put my leg on and off we marched. She led through half the hack and then we switched to Irish. Back in the ring I could feel her getting tense but instead of trying to hold her back I put my leg on and sent her forward. I also made use of Irish to draw her to some spots that she was feeling uncertain about. There was a huge blow up (on her part) at one spot in the ring and made her go forward. I am doing my best to not back down these days. During the excitement I felt her saddle shift so I had to hop off and tighten the girth. When I got back on the trouble was done. We finished with some nice canter work 


Autumn sunrises are always beautiful 

Wednesday the weather was windy and rainy and Thursday was a hard day at work and I wasn't feeling it so she had two days off in a row. 

Today was a lesson day (I have no media because I wanted to use my app to record the ride but that's a different post). The weather was beautiful- sunny and warm. We started with getting a swinging walk. It actually was pretty easy to get her into a nice walk. 

From there it was into a trot and it was going pretty nice when she gave a big sideways jump and tried to run off. But I was ready for her, got her stopped after a couple strides and marched her back to the rail to finish out figure. And that was the end. When I felt tension I put on my leg, we moved forward (but not fast). 

We worked on lengthening and shortening her stride and that is improving. As is our half-pass at trot- especially going to the right. She quite likes this work and will sometimes offer it as we come out of a corner. 

The other night I heard a kerfuffle when I was 
in the stall. I looked out to see three very innocent 
creatures who have no idea what I heard. 

We played with our turn on the haunches and those are getting so much better. After that I could feel her getting into a ball so we went from there to canter. The goal was to half-halt to get her to step under and ask for the canter so she'd lift into canter rather then fling her front legs into it. I spent some time in my own head about this making my timing awful. Of course Carmen also gets into her head so we're quite the pair sometimes. Once I stopped overthinking it we were able to make progress and we finished with some great transitions. It was one of those lessons that is just awesome from beginning to end. Not because we were perfect but because it felt like real progress. 
In exciting news we have our first egg from
one of our chickens (this one is Amy). 



17 comments:

  1. cute chicken! you are so lucky to have a nice hacking path on your property! have you ever tried walking carmen there on your own (leading not riding)? i led my horse on the trails for an entire year before i saddle trained him and i think it really did wonders for his trail confidence and ability to be alone with me

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    1. I did that a lot with Irish. I’ve been lax with Carmen but will get better

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  2. Congrats on the egg!! Sounds like a productive lesson too. For a while Charlie has what I thought were pretty good canter transitions... but somewhere along the way I think I kinda broke them lol, so it’s something we work on now too. Sigh ....

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    1. I doubt you broke them, you probably just asked him to use his butt more.

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  3. Congrats on the egg! Sounds like a productive lesson too. Charlie used to have pretty good canter transitions but somewhere along the way I kinda broke them so... we now we spend a lot of time working on them too. Sigh!
    (Sorry if this is a duplicate comment, new blogger is fussier on my phone....)

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  4. Congrats on the egg! Sounds like a productive lesson too. Charlie used to have pretty good canter transitions but somewhere along the way I kinda broke them so... we now we spend a lot of time working on them too. Sigh!
    (Sorry if this is a duplicate comment, new blogger is fussier on my phone....)

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  5. An egg...congrats! Amy is a pretty girl. Sounds like all is going well with you and Carmen.

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  6. I still remember when our first batch of chickens laid their first eggs -- so exciting!! And what a good lesson. The best lessons aren't when everything is perfect, but when you can feel that steady progress and enjoy all your hard work coming together 🙂

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    1. I agree about the 'best lessons'. I love feeling that we're moving forward.

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  7. Yeah, an egg! :-) My husband realllly wants chickens. lol Maybe next year.

    Glad that you are having some good rides and enjoying the nice fall weather.

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    1. I quite enjoy them. They have definitely made themselves at home on our little farm.

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  8. Sounds like a really productive lesson! I've apparently been a very bad rider lately, as all three of mine are struggling with canter transitions... And by struggling I mean they ignore me entirely the first time I ask. I know it's my fault, cause they can't all three be having the same issue otherwise!
    Congrats on the egg! That's eggciting! (sorry. I had to.)

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    1. LOL @ eggciting. :)

      It's great that riding three horses can help you pinpoint the problem but it also sucks because it means it's you. :)

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