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Thursday, May 5, 2011

A quick update

Well it has been a bit crazy around the lovely state of AR the past few weeks. We have had several of these...

http://theheatmag.com/live-stream-of-tornado-in-arkansas/

Which caused lots of damage, thankfully all the tornadoes went around me (although far too close for comfort).

Then we had more rain, and more rain, and even more rain. The rain started Saturday night (right after I dismounted) and didn't stop till late Monday evening... so just one week after the tornadoes went through we now had to deal with this....
http://www.nwaonline.com/news/2011/may/04/floods-congest-county-traffic-20110504/

The month of April and the first few days of May have been extremely wet... which makes it kinda hard to ride when all you have is an outdoor arena.

We did get a short break last week and Thursday evening I hopped on for a short ride as we had a lesson schedule for the next day and I wanted to remind myself what we needed to work on. Boy was that ride frustrating!!!!! So glad I hopped on... as I knew exactly what I wanted to work on in my lesson!!!

This trainer was a new one, M is over an hour away and P is only 20 min away so roomie and I decided to give her a go.

It was a great lesson. I loved it and walked away feeling very satisfied with the lesson. Since this was mine and the roomie's first lesson with P it's hard to tell how training with her over the next few months will go. M has worked with roomie for years and since she only makes it there every few months M gives several exercises to work on. P spent the whole time on one. I loved this!! Maybe that's because the exercise was for the issue that has had be so frustrated that sometimes I just give up and get off :-/

That would be flexion. In our lesson with M we worked on rhythm, as that is the first step in training a dressage horse. We have also been doing lots of work at the halt with flexing and turn-on-the-forehands.  Well over the last few months we have decent rhythm and our halt work is great. So now it is time to put the things together... but I had no clue how to do that..... insert P.

The lesson was extremely frustrating!! She had me working on a circle at the walk and as we went along I had to use outside rein and inside leg to push him out, the inside rein told him to flex to the inside. For a horse that understands this it is no big deal, but to a green horse it is frustrating.

Green horse + inexperienced-at-training-a-green-horse = extreme frustration

This exercise was hard for me as I forget that Romeo is further along then I think he is. And I also forget that my horse has a nasty side to him and also likes to play dumb. P would point out throughout the lesson that he does understand what I want he just doesn't like to do it because it is hard. So the whole lesson was a fight with some brilliance thrown in.

Thankfully Saturday the rain held off for a few hours after I got off work so I could get in a ride to reinforce the lesson. Tracking to the right (which ironically was the one that was terrible before the lesson) was great!! However, tracking to the left (previously our "good" side) was awful!! So we fought again for a little while and eventually got some good things to end on.

One thing I have to remind myself is to not get into a pulling match with him... both of us are stubborn and strong willed and sometimes I forget to remain soft (old habits die hard). But we are getting there and have both come such a long way!!! I can't wait till our first show in June!!!

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