Sunday Funday

Another great weekend has come and gone.  

Saturday I worked in the morning, at the tack store, with my friends, so not really work.  The couple that own Gigi, Gunner, and Zyda came in to look at dressage saddles and we found a few that might work.  They took two out on trial.  

After the tack store I headed out to ride Rio (the hairy Andalusian princess).  The barn she is at was packed with weekend warriors.  She dealt with the over crowded arena well, but took offense to a horse she spotted far away out the door.  We went from a tense, but passable walk, to head in the air sideways run/spins.  Deep sigh.  When will you grow up horse?  I quickly got her back under control and stayed on a tiny figure 8 somewhat out of the way.  She is so strange, if you get on the fight with her she stays on the fight for the whole ride, if you can manage to just walk around until she chills then suddenly she is all responsive and behaves and you can ride all around walk, trot, canter.  By 'just walk' I mean walking with head throwing, spinning, backing up, and general rudeness.  I swear she waits 'til you get to that point of pulling your hair out and then she's all, 'oh hi, did you want me to do something?'  

Finally I headed out to the 100 acres and cleaned my tack room, rode Bridger, and ate amazing food.  The tack room seriously looked like a bomb had gone off, it is now much more organized and has the appearance of much space.  I pulled Bridger out and gave him a good grooming while he worked on inserting his brain (first time out of the field in a while).  He chilled out pretty quickly so I tacked him up and hopped on.  We just walked around for a bit and called it good.  I didn't lunge him, but if I'd wanted to trot it may have been helpful, because as I turned him loose back with his friends he gave a good snort/buck and bolted across the entire thing!

Yay Bridger!

Happiest Pat cat in the world!

After feeding everyone I went inside and had the most amazing polenta and pork chops.  Just. Wow.  I could have ate my weight in the stuff, so delicious!

I didn't get pictures of the food, but check out these pink sparkle nails!

Zelda is still cute:)

Sunday morning involved two homework assignments and some spring cleaning.  Then I met up with sprinklerbandit and we went and rode.  I helped try the dressage saddles on Gigi and Gunner and we may have found one that works quite well.  Then we headed over so I could ride Gus, but he had thrown one shoe and sprung the other, doh.  So he got some grooming, and we looked at all his beautiful tack (including two of my current crush, Ogilvy pads).

The highlight of the day for me was hiking around the 100 acres.  My friend with the property, her little boy (light saber in hand) SB and I trekked all around it.  I didn't get any pictures until we were past the creek (for some unknown reason it was a low photo weekend), but up at the top the view is amazing.

We were hiking around to get more of a feel for the lay of the land for future cross country course building.  I need to make a video or something so you can see how amazing it is.  There are hills and plateaus and valleys and a creek that varies from wide and shallow to having steep sides.  So much potential!

Just a little longer

So I took my final two point time, but in the spirit of normal for me procrastination I think I will take one last one on tomorrow the final day of two point torture.  You know, just in-case I can grind it out a little longer!  That said, Diva and I have had the most incredible week.  I'm sorry for being positive kind-of all the time, but really I'm not sorry.  I've had a lot of ups and downs and right now most things are up and I'm focusing on it.  When things are down I try to not focus on it, yes I have been accused of acting like Pollyanna.

I seriously just found that whole  movie on youtube!  If you haven't seen it, you should watch it.  Total classic, I don't even know how many times I watched it as a kid.
*spoiler alert*
Pretty much she is always positive, then she gets crippled and the whole community that she taught to be positive supports her and helps find the joy again.

I wish they still made movies like that!

Woah, rabbit trail, I do believe there is serious danger of me becoming a crazy cat lady/distracted professor type when I am old.

Back to horses.
So Diva did this this week:

Figured out how to jump like this!

And trot like this!

and this!

and this!

Everything just started clicking for her and it felt amazing!  The next step will be to continue developing her caboose so the balance can come up off of the forehand.  That will involve a million transitions and hill work.  Speaking of hill work, she also did this:

We walked down this

And then back up it

We went on another trail ride!!!!!  Just a couple of OTTB's being the best!  There was one mishap that ended ok that sprinklerbandit discusses here.  The part where I tumble to the ground happened due to my arms only stretching so far between Diva and Courage's reins.  I only tumbled off of my own two feet so no injury.  Then they were both the best...pretty sure Diva and Courage are have a 'best at' contest.  Currently his jumping and uphillness is winning, but her general flat work is winning.  I need to remember to get a picture of the scary strange walkover thing that caused the early trail ride mishap (no worries buddy it freaks me out too).  I'm so happy to have the combo for the lock on the legitimate gates.  Seriously though, the ride was amazing.  Diva was on the buckle, figured out balance going downhill, and how to stay on the trail.  I'm so in love with her right now.

Bliss

Best time with buddies!

Ok so the one thing that I don't love about her is her bottomless stomach.  OMG.  That mare eats so much food.

Jumping and a Challenge

Ok, challenge first.  L and Hilary are running a twopointober contest and today I joined in the fun and pains and got my baseline.  Drumroll please: 12:02!!!!  12 minutes, I think sprinklerbandit got bored timing, I even tried mixing it up with walk/trot/canter transitions and some leg yeilds.  I will be bringing an actual watch for future timing so that the smartphone doesn't have to be held in one's hand for so long.  My only worry is if I will be able to improve very much on it, prize for longest baseline anyone?

Yeah for time spent galloping the racehorses

Ok on to the jump lesson as promised.  It. Was. So. Fun.  I rode an older mare that I have actually taught some pony club kids on before, but never ridden.  She was a total blast.  She started out behind the leg which the intrepid instructor warned me about so I did some forward and back in the canter and worked on getting a feel for her gaits.

Looking for our line

We started over two gates with flowers two strides apart.  The second time through I remembered that I could in fact sit up, steer, and keep my leg on.  Then we moved on to a forward five stride bending line.  After that it was a two to a two, and another two stride elsewhere in the ring.  Then we put it all together in a fun course with some tight turns.  Corvi (the mare) was a champ.  I had a few lines where she was still behind my leg and we would muddle through, but we would come back around with more pace and fly through.

Too much pace here, flying!

Ready to go attack a cross country course

The biggest challenge for me was trusting her to jump and being confident about our take off and striding.  After riding greenies and dishonest horses for so long it was really a challenge to ride forward to the jump with out getting defensive.  We worked on it and talked about it and came out the other side.  Seriously couldn't stop grinning.  The last jump was bigger than I've jumped in quite some time (+ side of 3'3") squee!

The big finish

Yahoo!

 Sprinklerbandit even took a video of our last line (thank you!).

As I started out I was worried that I would be sloppy in my form, but over all it felt good.  Steph was impressed with my riding and after my last jumping lesson it was the confidence boost I needed.  I am going to try and make this a regular occurrence.