May Week 1 Review

Friday May 1
I'm pretty sure I rode, but I actually don't remember :x

Saturday May 2
Awesome dressage lesson with Melinda. Worked on really getting her to carry herself and moving towards real connection -- it's new for both of us and still very hard to feel correctly, so we'll need more lessons. Worked on 20-meter circle almost the whole time, after warmup. Reins much shorter, need to stop throwing her away just when she relaxes into contact. Always always always steady outside rein, outside leg BACK to keep the haunches in line, flex slightly inside with the rein while bending with the inside leg, then release and ask her to soften into the contact.
Interspersed periods of this with free walk or trot or canter. The quality of her gait changed a lot when we went into free motion: swinging, freer, longer steps. I need to maintain this feeling once I connect her again. Melinda says to always give the inside-bend aids before allowing a free rein, to help associate gentle inside softening with total relaxation.

Sunday May 3
Day off. She got free-longed around the round pen, since the OHSET team was using the arena for the whole time we were out there. It was VERY wet in the [outdoor] round pen, and Pandora was not a big fan of all the puddles, but she still went nicely.


So let me preface this by saying that I did reeeeally bad this week. I was having a bit of a rough week school-wise, and my dog injured himself in the middle of the night Monday, so I just..didn't really ride. Which is bad! Next month is going to be a huge month for me, and I have a Combined Test next weekend (dressage and stadium jumping) that's going to be just awful if I don't get some riding time in. So next week I need to really buckle down.

Monday May 4
Free-longed.

Tuesday May 5
Free-longed.

Wednesday May 6
Free-longed. Seeing a pattern yet?

Thursday May 7
Had a great ride tonight. I rode with a friend around the 2-mile loop. We went through a lot of water-filled ditches today, which I would say was a mediocre success. She always took a flying leap the first time. Twice we stopped to school it. The first time it was pretty long, and very shallow, and a bit running, so it was like a small little stream. She actually would walk through it, but just did not like having her feet in the water. The next time was a much larger, deeper pond-type thing, but not too deep. We leapt over it the first time (probably 6 feet?) and when I tried to get her to go through it, she just would not budge. I felt bad, but I didn't want to just leave it. So I got off and tried to lead her through. She disapproved, but went through once. The next time, she finally seemed to give in: she paused, very deliberately took a step into the water, and walked/trotted through without leaping or running me over. I called that good.
Doing this is actually much harder than it's going to be on an XC course, for now at least -- the water complexes we'll see are very inviting, with really good footing, and not at the bottom of a [shallow] ditch. Still, it is good practice, and I can still feel definite improvement. We are not going to go to Inavale this weekend because it rained all week, so hopefully we'll get to go week after next.

Oh, we also took a detour on our loop. There's a dead-end with a big hill that we walked up - and it was a beast! Pretty steep and long. Pandora really powered up, taking big huge walk steps, but I could tell it was really hard for her. By the end she was tiring out, and I think the steepness worried her a little. I will be careful about how often I ride it, and if we always go all the way up to the top. The rest of the ride was uneventful, though we did get a little impromptu passage when a herd of young horses galloped up to their fence and then away again. :)

Friday May 8
Pandora just stayed in the field, and they were out overnight too, finally. I had a Biology field trip to Fall Creek from 1 - 7pm, which was actually pretty fun. I can now identify lots of common native plants, and we got to go on an hourlong hike along the creek, which was really nice. The weather was perfect.

Saturday May 9
Left 'em out in the pasture. Did I mention that I have a huge history project due on Monday?

Sunday May 10
My mom and I had a nice mother's day ride today. I worked on some of the stuff I learned last week in the Melinda lesson. It went okay, I think? It's so hard to tell since she's had me working on such subtle stuff that even when she was right there guiding me, it was hard to feel exactly what was going on. Oh well - it felt like a good solid workout, and I feel like we made some progress.

Free trot to the left not good, she wants to bend to the outside and cut in and increase tempo. I know that means I'm not doing it right before I stretch her, but I'm not sure what to do, and by this time in the ride she was getting a little resistant. I guess I just need to keep trying.

The free canter was nice.