Ahhhh I love my pony so much! Days like these are what I live for. I almost didn't get out to the barn today, but fate was in my favor and a car was available, so I sped off at 6:00 to ride before the sun was gone. Rush had been really frustrating the day before, to the point where I got off and did round pen work instead because she just wasn't paying attention to me and I didn't want things to escalate. Today I decided to start off in the round pen, and then do a bareback hack and see how it went.
Well first off let me say I'm really proud of her, because she has the change of direction thing down pat BOTH ways now, without me having to drill it into her some more. She's also balancing herself up a lot more and can canter like a normal horse in the round pen, instead of scrambling madly with legs flying everywhere trying to stay upright. She usually starts off fast after the transition and settles down within a stride or two. She had some trouble crossfiring to the left, but overall did really well balancing herself up. To the right she was perfect, as usual. One day we will balance those sides out.. one day..
Anywho, I hopped on bareback and hoped that I wouldn't make a fool of myself and end up in the dirt. I mean, I've ridden bareback before, but on her I've only walked around because her transitions are so jarring and her canter was the worst thing ever and I didn't want to subject myself to that. We started off doing a few walking laps of walk/halt transitions (oh, btw, she was in the D-ring today) which went really well. Then I took a deep breath and cued her for trot, and we kinda muddled around the ring figuring things out. The first few laps was me figuring out my balance, and then I started focusing on keeping my hands up and elbows elastic and really pushing her forward. We got some pretty decent trot work in; I think I was so focused on keeping myself on that I softened up and stopped nitpicking about things like where her head was and how fast we were going, and she started to trust my hands a little more.
Canter work.. was awesome. The transitions were a little icky, but they usually are bareback. Again, I was so focused on staying on (she's quite slippery!) that I stopped fussing over things like how fast we're going and just rode her forward into my contact. I think she has somewhat of an idea that I wasn't 100% secure on top of her and she made sure she didn't pull anything that would unseat me. We had some awesome work to the right, including some breaks that were my fault that she bounced back into the canter from as if they were nothing. Things started a little dicier to the left, but we figured things out and a really good rhythm going. I know what you're thinking. Rush, rhythm? Yes, it happened!
All in all I am over the moon about our ride, so much that I think I'm going to dedicate this week to bareback rides.
No comments:
Post a Comment