Riding Diary: 5

Horse: Betty
        - owned by the barn

Bit: Snaffle with Copper Inlay

Time: 1 hr

Ride: This was a bit of a scatter brained lesson, it started with my trainers high-strung, but usually well behaved, horse attempting to buck and run the entire length of the arena instead of being sane. He was a little concerned, she was clearly exhibiting some red flags that she wasn't feeling 100% and so, eventually, he jumped off and had her back checked, looked like something was out of place. It's always a good reminder to listen to your house, you know their typical behaviors and something that doesn't seem right can often be a pain response.

So, after all of that was resolved I worked on circles, escalating from small to large, stops, and rollbacks. I was having a hard time with my rollbacks, they just weren't as sharp and neat as I wanted them. Betty felt like she was really just turning quickly, not actually working off of her hind end. My trainer thought that perhaps her lack of sharpness might be in part to the fact that I wasn't wearing spurs, her regular rider wears spurs on her so he told me that next lesson I can bring spurs and we'll see how it goes.

Other than that now that school is back I have to do a lesson after a full day of classes and I definitely noticed that I was having a hard time being as sharp and responsive. Looks like Betty and I have something in common hey?

I was getting frustrated with her as well because every time she even got a glimpse of the flag (which we were not using) she started acting like a complete idiot and lost all the focus I felt she had before. So I had to work a lot on keeping her focus when we were doing anything near the flag.

Next Time: Rollbacks - sharper, neater, tighter, more engaged.

Side Note - Freckles has been sold, she was in a past life a rope horse and a well known roper came and tested her out, she was super quiet with him and did really well. He's going to take her home, work her on the heel-o-matic and probably sell her for quite a nice sum of money as a finished rope horse. I was definitely sad to see her go, and truth be told I don't really click with Betty, so hopefully a new horse finds it's home at my barn that I can call mine for a little while.