First Frost

The girl who usually drives me out of the barn on the weekends flew home for her birthday, and it's a three day weekend and I couldn't justify not going to see my pony so I reserved a zipcar for this morning (and tomorrow morning!). I was a little apprehensive about driving cause the roads around here can be kinda crazy and confusing and I haven't driven in a while so I'm a bit rusty, but it was early enough in the morning that there was pretty much no traffic and it was a lovely drive and made me realize I actually really miss driving! It's super relaxing and also coincidentally the only time I can crank up the music obnoxiously loud and sing in my incredibly horrific voice without worrying that I'm bothering other people (re: anybody who lives on my floor because these walls are paper thin).

It was actually ridiculously cold this morning and I'm really glad I put on a last-minute third layer before going out, because I definitely needed it! I usually take off my layers while riding because I get too hot, but I kept everything on today and then some and was still a little frozen by the end. There was frost EVERYWHERE and even some icicles hanging off of jumps! This was my first riding experience in actual coldness and I have a lot to learn, like how to tack up without killing my fingers on cold metal.

Anywho, I ended up taking Rush out on a trail to warm up at the walk cause I actually had time to explore. It ended up being a really long gravelly road that crossed actual roads through some housing developments, so not really the type of trail I'd typically choose, but now I know what's down that direction and can explore the others.. which reminds me, I need to do some aerial recon to hopefully figure out the trail system a bit better. She was a little spooky at the road crossings, but it was just balkiness and some looking and nothing worse than that and we worked through it with some firm squeezes and maybe some teasing about scary landscaping rocks.

We probably trailed for a little under half an hour and then came back to the outdoor arena to get some real work done. I got some nice consistent trotting in, where she was solid and steady in the bridle instead of ducking under it like she's prone to do when she has energy. She started off a little fast and hollow but relaxed after I did some wacky patterns and serpentines to get her listening a little better.

There was a crosspole line set up down one side of the ring, and since I'm focusing on slow and consistent solid jumping I took her through the line at the trot a couple times before cantering. She was a trooper at the trot and didn't pull any shenanigans, although I did need to straighten her out a couple times. I really focused on pulling her together after each jump, since my bad habit is to throw everything away after a jump and praise her for just getting over it. I have to keep reminding myself that this is BAD and she needs to know that just jumping it isn't enough anymore, she has to keep listening afterwards.

Anyways, we trotted through it each direction a few times then cantered through it both ways. She was super responsive about waiting for the short spots and slowing down through the line. I have to be careful about asking for a longer spot because she shoots off after the jump. The first few times through cantering were a little iffy but each time through we focused on refining one more aspect (first time: wait for the short spot, second time: stay straight through the line, third time: stay slow after the second jump) and at the end she was cruising through pretty well :)

At this point I decided to make it more 'course like' and did some continuous jumping at the canter to work on staying in one rhythm without freaking out after each jump. She did pretty well until I asked her for a long spot over a downhill jump and then we became a freight train, but after I halted and made her turn around, trot over it, then canter back down in she settled back down. This is actually kinda huge because usually when she gets in trouble for something she freaks out and gets really hollow and anxious and ignored everything, so us being able to work through that was awesome.

I'm definitely going to start working on lead changes, but I have to figure out a plan of attack for them before I start because last time things didn't go too well and I ended up creating another problem even though she did start executing lead changes.