Hmm, well, I had some time off the farm. I traveled in the
old brown car (it had its 168,000 mile birthday) to visit home. It got a big
pat once it got me in driveway, and not a cross road sooner. I didn’t get much
time off horses though; there was only one day I didn’t ride while I was back.
I did some beach riding, sat on a 4yo gelding for the first time in his life,
and had a few lessons on my favorite gelding, Ari. I had a great time seeing
everyone on the little adventures that popped up here and there.
Grady, the 4yo, being backed.
Not taken from my trip, but this is Ari and I jumping last winter.
Now, it's back to work in Idaho. Jack has graduated from doing circles in the barn aisle to
doing circles in a small outside pen. He adjusted well, the first day he was
really thinking about the footing with a person on his back, the second day the
footing and his balance was no concern. He tried to turn his head and bite my boot;
hopefully he doesn’t ever succeed because I am sure he would enjoy that game!
Tommy has been ridden twice since getting a few visits to
the horse chiropractor. I felt a tremendous physical change in him just in the
first few steps of walking away from the barn, to arena. It’s quite something
and if I doubted chiro work for horses, it would have changed my mind. The first ride to the second ride had a big change, it’s like he is starting to realize his body
isn’t going to hurt and being much less defensive in his movement. He’s quite
nice when he is relaxed, I hope he gets more consistent.
Ami has had some dressage/flat riding, and did some bank and
ditch schooling today. After riding Ari back home I came back and was thinking
of my nice ride on him and trying some of the exercises I did with him. She was a bit surprised, Ari is
farther along than her, but she accepted the exercises well. Her jumping today
was quite entertaining. We warmed up over some verticals with some walls
underneath the rails that she thought were something to put some space between
her and the fences. Tom kept on saying that Ami needs to be rideable and give
me options, not get rev up and attack things. I was wondering if I was riding
her too aggressively, causing her to lose some rideability, or if she was just
spooking at the walls.
After the spooky verticals, we all went up and worked on the
bank complex. We’ve done banks before, but not for a while. I haven’t done a
lot of bank work, I know the basics, but I definitely think of them of an
obstacle where if you ride a little poorly, you'll have a big problem. What’s
nice about Ami is that even though she can be tugging on me when we’re
cantering around, when we are going to a bank or a jump she definitely sees
the upcoming obstacle, gets serious and balances herself for it. She still gets excited,
but she keeps her brain, knows where her feet are, takes care of herself and
keeps me safe. At one point we jumped up the bank, cantered a stride across the
top, and dropped down. Ami jumped big up the bank with much enthusiasm, took
her canter stride and had a “Oh, I didn’t know there was a down element here!” moment
before launching down.
The ditch was fine. I had our ditch issue at the clinic in
my mind, and chose to walk up to the ditch and let her jump over it, which I
was told was a good plan. Ami doesn’t have enough experience cross country to
know that a ditch could be coming up, and she’ll stop when she is surprised by
one. The ditch was little, and I thought it would be fair to give her plenty of
time to see it and jump it, and to avoid any issues. She kept walking, looked, rocked back, and jumped it just fine. We were then able to trot over it with out anyone getting worried about it.
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