Riding Diary - 55

Time: 2 hr

Ride: Remember that one time I dreamt and wished that my horse was one of those magical horses you hear about, that you can just show up and ride once a week and have lovely transitions, calm departures, and beautiful cadence? People tell me about these horses and I wonder if they actually ride unicorns. Let me tell you something, Jingle is NOT a unicorn.

I showed up to another barrel lesson, gymkhana season is coming pretty fast down the tube here, and Jingle has got to get his turning butt in gear. Funny enough, at the sorting our friendly mentor R told me that I was using "barrel turns" way too often, and needed to focus on stopping, rollbacks and pivots. You know whats funny R? that's what we've been working on ALL WINTER and I focus on barrels for legit 2 weeks and apparently forget how to ride cows. uhm, dur. Score a - for your rider Jingle.

We worked on downward transitions, canter to jog transitions turn my horse into a steaming dragon of hellfire and anger. "YOU WANT ME TO GO SLOW AND THEN GO FAST AND THE GO SLOW AGAIN?" weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee we go around the arena at mach speed. This is my life, ya'll. Of course I picked like THE busiest lesson day i've seen in months to show off my horses bratty behaviour. woop woop.

After getting some half-assed transitions we moved on to barrel work, we practiced some slow stuff to begin with, and then my trainer had me trot to the first, and pick up our left lead to second and third. Jingle was doing alright, but his third barrel is still messy and sloppy, and so she had me attempting to teach him rate and check him into a jog before we hit third. Jingle has done this before, Jingle has actually suprised me with how well he will listen to me before we hit that third barrel. On this day - that was all gone, down the spirally drain of horsemanship. To assist with his third barrel, which generally starts out good but then Jingle shoots past it and makes a huge arc around it, my trainer gave me a crop to lightly pop his shoulder over for when we're entering the barrel turn. Jingle hates crops. Jingle looses his absolute mind when a crop is introduced, even when i'm just holding a crop. I have no idea why... it is seriously unfortunate. The crop got tossed in the dirt because Jingle was becoming a rocking horse... and that's never fun.

We kept at it though - even to the point where Jingle decided to gallop home from third and literally almost slammed us both into the wall before narrowly missing it. Jingle, this is why I tell you that if given the choice you would have always been a gelding, because there's no way in hell natural selection chooses horses that willingly slam into walls. So, Jingle and I did some really nice "Hey fuckhead. This is how we stop" work, everyone was giving us horrified looks.. my horse is a freight train.

Then, we went back to the barrel pattern, taking is slow, not asking for a lope to get him slowed down again, and we got some nice turns at the trot, and at the jog, finally, we loped second and third again and it was a bit more controlled and calm, and so we quit on a good note.

After that, I got to jump on one of my old "babies", Soren (now named Parker) that ended up being bought from the sale of my old ranch and brought to our barn. I warmed him up for his new horsiemamaowner and it was lovely. First of all, horse has got some serious Hunter under Saddle AQHA game. He has the floatiest, most expressive trot. Plus he's slow and steady, oh mah lawd. I even got to trot the barrel pattern on him a couple times, he doesn't turn as snappy as Jingle does, so it took me a minute to figure out how to turn the big lug, but we worked it out. It was awesome. Meanwhile, Laura (Team Bitch of LV Horses (that's my new horse team name, i've decided) hahaha) got to cool down the ever jiggy/fast-moving Jingle. She's the best. Everyone needs a Laura on their team.

For Next Time: I know this post wasn't very "good", but afterwards I was talking with Laura about the ride. Sure, it was pretty nasty, and a couple months ago I would have left the barn and probably come straight home and blogged about how my horse is trying to kill me (k, that still rings true) and how we're never going to get the pattern and how I'm a terrible rider yadayadayada. Now, I've seen his potential, I understand and get his issues and I know that we'll get it - it'll just take a lot of work. Similiar to how much work it took to get his leads and now he's banging those outta the park. So now, our bad rides don't really bum me out like they use too, I just chalk them to "that coulda gone better", and move on. I think he's starting too, too. We're growing up guys ! Someone pass me a tissue to wipe the arena dirt out of my eyes.

So for next time? We're still in speed boot camp. Homeboy has gotta figure out that if he's well-mannered at the slower gaits, he has to also act respectfully at the faster stuff. We'll get there.

Riding Diary - 53

Ride: So, I snuck out to the barn on wednesday when I should have been studying (bad, bad Louisa) but honestly I was going pretty stir-crazy. When I got there a lesson-group was warming up and I asked my trainer if I could sneak in - yipeee, she allowed me, and it was a barrel-racing focused lesson. I was pumped. Jingle and I have been working on barrels alone, in anticipation for the upcoming gymkhana season that I want to dip my toes into, but the second I ask him for any sort of speed.. bye-bye-pony.

For not being ridden for a week, he warmed up like a star. "Yes, those of you who remember my horse running me into walls, look how wonderful my horse is now, look at his beautiful headset, suck on this." Then my trainer asked me if I was going to allow her to ask me to lope again, I gave her one of these faces "-__________-" we we're working on slow stuff, ooooo-kaaaayyyy, and told her that yes, she had permission to allow me to lope again. I am a bit of a brat, I tell ya.

Jingle picked up his right lead perfectly and away we went around the arena, he was actually being really nice and listening to my checks and leg.. which is impressive as his right lead generally turns him into a fire breathing dragon of "fun". I've mostly been trotting the pattern but a couple of weeks ago I had Jingle trotting 1st and 2nd and then loping to third, breaking down before the barrel into a trot, turning it, and then loping home. He was actually doing it marvelously, so my trainer thought we should try that to see how he was. Well, it wasn't as marvelous as it had been before, he wouldn't break down into the trot right away, which caused a half-loping mess around 3rd... that's not pretty! regroup.

From there, we attempted 1st barrel, lope to 2nd, lope to third, attempt to break it down, or if not, turn the barrel twice and lope home. After a couple of attempts, including my trainer handed me a crop so I could lightly pop his shoulder when he attempted to take too-wide of a berth around third, my horse turned into that dizzy mess he often does when speed is introduced. My trainer was just laughing and said that we'd lost Jingle's brain again, and that it was time to go back to slow, because clearly we needed to work on the slow stuff before we could ask him for speed. (story of my life) We broke it back down to a nice jog or trot and worked at the pattern from there, and he did really well by the end of it. I was able to regain control of his pea-brain, and he was able to figure out how to pick up his shoulder and nicely turn a barrel. Despite his "Hey mahm, I've seen barrel horses enter the arena sideways from the alley and then gallop off, maybe I should do that across the entire arena?!"

My trainer left me with some homework For Next Time she wanted me getting Jingle's nose following my hand, especially when we were loping, because he does it perfectly at the trot. She told me that first off, when I'm loping the rail, at every corner in the arena she wants me to come off, lope a small, tight circle, and then lope away, at every corner. Second, she wanted me loping half the arena and then coming straight down the centre, and then off again, because Jingle still has a hard time carrying himself very straight at a lope, and needs practice.

Today I went out to see my boy with this homework in mind. My horse was a freight-train at the lope. excellent. but I was determined to keep going. See, with all this slow work and time i've spent on Jingle my horse can now move off my leg pretty damn nicely, we have our pivots, turn arounds, sidepassing, rollbacks.. all of that, is pretty much down, but only at the slower gaits. Now that he knows how to do that, I feel as if we can leave Kindergarten and welcome him back to the world of speed in a nice, calm way. Yep, No, Jingle don't play that game. Jingle is a cyclone, intent on ripping up the arena from within.

It was hard work, I think both of us kept looking at eachother like "WTF are we doing?!" I was sweating buckets and so was he, but by the end of the day, my speed-demon was loping around my hand in the corners, and not being too much of a strung out idiot about asking him for more speed. I was happy.

We left the barn and ambled down the road (I was in my T-shirt, hurray! is this spring in Alberta finally?!) Jingle's birthday is tomorrow and in my family, the tradition is that my mom always tells my birth story to me on my birthday. Well.. Jingle, I'm not your "real" biological mother so I don't know that story (I'm sure it goes... somewhere out in a field during a shitty day in April, you managed to survive the birthing process) but I found myself telling Jingle the "story of us". I am a sap. I know. As we ambled down the road I got to the part of this last summer where he had gone missing and was nowhere to be found and completely choked up and burst into tears. There was a lot of petting and his ears were cocked back and he kept looking back at me. haha poor boy has a psycho for a mother.

Anyways, as I was sobbing and telling my horse how much I loved him and how much he meant to me, two massive dogs came bolting up to the fence line and scared the shit out of both of us. He turned on his haunches and jumped right out of his skin and away from that fence line. It took me a bit of time to get him slowed down and stopped. Great metaphor... As is our life together, one part sappy love story, one part hysterical ridiculousness.