dancing horses

dancing horses

Wednesday, April 22, 2020

Escape



The past few days my little province has been in the news. Some discontented white man went on a rampage, wreaking carnage and heartbreak over a 13 hour period before being killed by cops. While I don't know anyone personally, I am, like all of us, reeling from this horror. There are no words. Well, except for fuck.

Frankly, between this and Covid-19 I am so done with 2020. I can't even watch the news anymore (and I am usually a news junkie). It's been hard to be motivated.
On monday, Mother Nature graced us with a beautiful sunset

I am old enough to know that sometimes you just have to put one foot in front of the other. After work yesterday I decided that I needed to ride. I decided to see if I could set up my phone to take some media. And it worked.

Carmen was more energetic than our previous ride, looking for evil. I was pretty sure that she was feeding off my own negative energy. So the goal was to get her to bend and be soft. Not that it was easy. However, when I looked at the video after she didn't look as bad as she felt.

poor Carmen I had trip hazards everywhere

In this video you can see that she's wanting to throw her head and come to the inside. I do my best to not buy into the tension and get into an argument. Instead I stay calm and help her to relax. The smartest thing I ever did was attach a grab strap to the saddle. This helps me to be confident in relaxing the rein and not get dumped.


Carmen felt like a ball of energy so I decided to move her into trot to get her moving and relaxing. Whatever else she has taught me, I have learned to be tuned into her body language to figure out where her attention in and what she's thinking. I've noticed that, when she's worried about the outside, she tends to shift all her weight to the inside. It's not that she's actually tilting but more like she's carrying more weight on the inside. I work on getting her to shift her weight to be even. Does that make sense? have you ever experienced that? How did you fix it? I've been asking her to shift to the outside with my weight. It seems to work. 

I don't know if you can see it but she's got more of her weight
on her left then her right. 

Since we had so much energy it seemed like a good time to work on simple changes through walk.  I was pretty happy with them- although a couple she tried to to just barrel through them and not sit on her hind end. I was pretty happy with this one. 


I also practiced our trot half-pass. It's got a long way to go but I was pretty happy with it. Her reach is nice and she clearly understands the ask. To be honest, in some ways it feels better than her leg yield. 


My goal is to not stagnate without lessons and it feels that I'm making progress. I think that this set up might work to set up a virtual lesson. We'll see. But it's nice to have something to look at and not just how it felt and/or my memory. 

Even more importantly, for about an hour I wasn't dealing with all the fall out from current events. For that time it was just me and Carmen working together.

17 comments:

  1. Read the news about the rampage and was completely horrified. What a shitty shitty year. But I'm glad you got this escape from the crap... even if it was only for an hour.

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    1. Honestly, what is it with this middle aged white guys? He started with his ex, because, well, of course he did. I think we all need a little escape these days.

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  2. I am very happy to see your post, as you were absolutely the first person I thought of when I saw the news. I have been anxiously awaiting to see your blog to make sure you, your family, and friends are all safe. I am very sorry something like that happened in your beautiful country.

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    1. Thank you. It so easily could have been someone I know. It's such a small province. It's the worst mass shooting in Canada's history. We rarely have these events.

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  3. I am glad you are safe, I have been worrying about you. Take whatever escape you can get and keep on putting one foot in front of the other.

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    1. Thank you. I will keep on going, just like everyone else.

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  4. You and your province have been in my thoughts all week <3

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    1. thank you. these events are heart rending and so fucking needless.

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  5. 2020 needs unplugged and maybe left that way. I'm glad you weren't involved personally or knew anyone who was. Tragic.

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    1. 2020 is not a good year. Clearly it needs to start improving.

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  6. What Liz said. When I saw the photo of the sunset on Instagram, I knew you were "OK" but I've been thinking about you. I'm so finished with 2020 though, to be honest, I'm doing fine (just a lot of uncertainty). Every year has been something lately. They've all just sucked. It's so hard to focus on the big picture so I'm not. I'm just trying to enjoying morning snack with the horses right now and getting mugged for treat. Bad habits and all, but it brings be joy to have 2 thoroughbreds with their soft noses nuzzling me in the face and I need stuff that makes me smile. Otherwise, I 'll depressed. So, for now, I'm enjoying morning snack with my boys.

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    1. YOu snack routine sounds perfect to me. Honestly, if I didn't have my dogs to walk in the woods and my horses to take care of I would be a lot worse.

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  7. I wish we could fast forward through the rest of 2020 and start afresh!
    I'm glad you have Carmen to give you something else to focus on. You two are looking great!

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  8. there's so much ugliness happening in the world right now. a lot of good too, tho. and i'm glad some of that good is happening in the form of great rides for you and Carmen <3

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    1. You are right- there is also good and we need to not lose sight of that.

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  9. I'm so sorry about what happened in your province. The world we live in seems almost unrecognizable from the world I remember :(

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