Riding Diary: 15

Horse: Quiz

Time: 1 hr

Ride: It has been 6 years since I've blogged... but I've been running around like a madman (or perhaps.. a chicken with her head cut off, more like it) working 3-4 different jobs, working 60-70 hours a week, as well as a giant personal project on my hands. I have one night a week off... and as of next week... i'll be busy then too. Goodbye life. It was so nice knowing you.

Anyways, I'm definitely going to be a bit of an absentee from this blog, and even from horses. However, I still have my Monday lessons to look forward too! Quiz was being really good on Monday, as per usual. We worked on a looooooooot of loping. I'm getting down my leads, but i'm still frustrated that I don't know which lead I'm on 100% of the time. Things to work on.

In preparation for flying lead changes we did more breaking down exercises, loping large circles, and then at the centre breaking down into a jog, and then back to a lope. Quiz isn't exactly a "breaker downer", half the time we we're almost at the end of the circle before she was truly jogging. Sometimes it feels like I'm a 16 year old kid trying to learn standard, go-lurch-go-lurch-go-lurch-go-stall-lurch, etc.etc.etc. What a good metaphor for my riding... haha.

Once Quiz settled into that routine we worked on loping a circle, breaking down into the jog in the centre, and then picking up the other lead and lope the other direction. If I remember correctly, this worked well for us, and I had all the right leads down, and was feeling good about it. I had to remind myself to sit up straight, and calm down. I've noticed in the jog i'm super upright, relaxed, calm, good body position, and then once you add speed I'm all over the place.

Finally, we worked on loping a circle with two poles in the centre, bit of a disaster. Sometimes I was checking too much, often not enough. I had some jumps over the poles, some walks over the poles, one or two complete stops at the poles... Quiz gets all frazzled and rushes through things, I tried to really work on dropping my hands and giving her a little more rein, which seems to help her calm down into a nice slow lope which is what I was looking for. We got one or two good runs out of that, and then quit for the day.

I was tired and sweaty (riding around in a bit of a ridiculous looking yoga top... showin' some skin ya'll), as was miss princess mare face. Good lesson had by all.

For Next Time: Keep calm, upright and relaxed at the lope. Work on keeping Quiz calm and slow through the poles. Work on focusing more on rider + horse, especially with leads. Get those leads down!