Prescription

At the same time I was battling the flu, Mother Nature decided to be passive aggressive and warm up. The temperatures literally went from -13 to +10 (celsius) in 24 hours. It was killing me that I was unable to go out and enjoy the January Thaw. 

It' an understatement to say that I miss riding. I honestly think that it's an important part of my mental health. I haven't really been able to ride since last year. Yes I know that was Dec 30, so like 3 weeks, but still last year.

Friday I felt a lot better but not really full functional. Or even half. I decided to not ride (adulting sucks) but made plans to join up with Julia and ride on Saturday. 

Irish: me too? Cool. 

I started with our ground work pattern and she was fine. I practiced her parking herself at the mounting block a few times. Here's a video showing some of our work:

You can see that she really wants to eat the grass that is on the other side of the block. Carmen is really good and staying true to her goals. 

My goal for the ride weren't anything huge- I just wanted her to walk around the ring calmly and in a relaxed fashion. Walking was really all that I was up for although we did do some (very tiny amount) of trotting. When she would get tight I would work on the pattern to help her relax. Part of that pattern is to not hold with the rein. That's a work in progress but it's coming. We finally were able to walk the entire ring with her on a long rein and then stopped.

good for what ails me

Julia and I made plans to ride again on Sunday. I decided to do a little bit of ground work in the morning and then ride in the afternoon.  I've been pushing things, asking Carmen to relax in her more tense areas. My tools were the tarp, my dressage whip, a whip with a plastic bag attached and a stick with some ribbons.

When I got into the ring I picked up a rock and threw it out of the ring. But of course I missed and it the board with a loud noise. Carmen jumped and then immediately put her head down to relax herself. Which was really good because I hadn't asked her to do that. She's starting to figure it out for herself.

Carmen can be really good about ignoring me when I play with the tools. Tristan says that you have to 'ask a question worth answering'. Which means that if the horse has zero reaction then you have to up the ante. Not to frighten them but to help them seek to manage themselves when spooky things happen.

I put the bag over her back and she was all like 'yawn. silly human.  But in upping the pressure I put it over the other side of her so that she saw me in her left eye but the bag in her right. That got a reaction. Quite a large one. I held the bag there until she stopped (I had to help her by disengaging her hind end) and then dropped her head a bit, then took it away. A few trials later and she realized that when it went over her back, as soon as she dropped her head it went away.

I worked on that from both sides. She was much more worried about it on the right then on the left. Which is in keeping with her spooks under saddle. It helped me to realize something too- I think that when I'm riding and she's focussed on the inside aids (like we always ask) and then something moves on the other side it causes her to react.  Knowing that can help me work on a plan to help her figure out how to deal with this.

I also used the stick with ribbons- which was great because the ribbons are kind of like fluttering birds (another thing that really bothers her).

Going over the tarp is no big deal. She feels really confident with that so I used that periodically to help answer the 'easy' questions. I don't think anyone can learn if everything is super hard.

photo fail: it's hard to take a photo while doing this!

While I was up in the ring doing the ground patterns with Carmen  Julia sent a text saying she couldn't come. Because I am all alone I decided to not ride. I worried that it would make me more tense and that would undo the work I had been doing. I was disappointed but still happy with the work we did. While I answered the text Carmen decided to chew on the ribbons.

I am feeling much better now and I'm sure that the horse time and time outside have a lot to do with it. Also, Ed's care. :)