May Week 3 Review

Monday 5/18
Gave Pandora another day off.

Tuesday 5/19
I had kind of a frustrating ride. She was behaving pretty oddly - rushing (which she rarely does) with short little steps, basically just tuning me out. I kept at it for about a half hour and eventually realized we weren't going to get any productive work done. So I spent 10 minutes or so doing some nice, quiet, polite walk work, then called it a day. You can't win 'em all, right?

Wednesday 5/20
Had a much better ride tonight. Schooled dressage. That dang left bend is coming back to haunt us again, and badly - she simply would not flex her jaw to the left at the trot, nor would she bend politely without swinging her haunches out. I did the best I could to correct it, riding hard, riding soft, flexing at the walk and halt, free trot, but nothing shook it loose. In the end I decided to just ride correctly and ignore it, which confused her a bit I think, but led to some reasonably productive work.
I have a call in to the chiropractor. I understand some of the left bend issue is psychological, but when she's resisting me this strongly, it usually means she's being bothered. Besides, it has been about 2 months since her last appointment, and every 2 months is usually when she starts getting out of whack again.

Thursday 5/21
Nice short hack with my mom and McKinna. Pandora was much better this time than the last time we went out with McKinna, very calm and relaxed. On the way back McKinna was acting terrible and we had a hard spook-session at some trash cans. I made Pandora go up and make friends with the trash can, but couldn't spend too long on it because Mom and McKinna were having some behavioral problems. We were close to home but McKinna was awfully naughty after that, ignoring Mom and spooking and generally misbehaving. Pandora kept her head on straight, so that was good. I guess I need to do some schooling with McKinna out on the roads by herself.

Friday 5/22
Day off. They have been out in paddocks 24/7 so no big deal.

Saturday 5/23
Gallop session! We definitely made some progress. I did one round of 6/3/1 (6 minutes walking, 3 minutes trotting, 1 minute canter/gallop), then did several reps of a walk rest/gallop set. I'm not sure how long those were, but the gallop sets were close to 3 or 4 minutes and the walks were about the same.
She was great. I tried riding with a bridge at the gallop and it seemed to make a big difference - I will have to explore this more. There were times when she listened really well and came back to me the moment I half-halted on a light rein, there were times when she wanted to ignore me completely. We got going pretty fast sometimes and it was very cool. Just as I hoped when I started my galloping practice, I have lost a lot of my fear and am a lot more comfortable letting her open up the gears a little bit.
Also found out she does flying changes on her own. The first time it was an accident, because she picked up the wrong lead and tried to really run for it, so I put her on a small circle. She swapped leads to be on the correct one. So, in my next gallop set, I did a nice big figure-8 through the field and asked her to change. She didn't change exactly when I asked, but a stride or two later. We did it one more time after that. So, I don't have to worry about lead changes on XC!
It was a great experience. We did 4 or maybe 5 gallop sets total. She cooled out really nicely - after about 4 minutes of walking her breathing was pretty much normal. I untacked her, hosed her down with cool water (which she never approves of, but tough luck), scraped her, then put her out in the paddock to get a drink of water and a nice long roll.

Sunday 5/24
Another day off. Hard work yesterday, hard work tomorrow!

Monday 5/25
It was an interesting day. We rode a course of 20 fences, spread all through the derby field and out into the upper field, in randomly drawn pairs. Unfortunately, my partner seemed to have turbo jets, even garnering a warning from the announcer to slow down (the course was not timed). Therefore, the whole ride I was stuck between trying to keep up with her (and thus letting Pandora go a bit faster than I wanted, thus exciting her, thus making me have to floss her teeth every time I wanted her attention) or trying to slow down, which made me fall way behind and get confused about what I was jumping next.
It was frustrating. Pandora was not nearly as responsive as I wanted her to be, at ALL. I think that was the most upsetting part, especially because I think with any other partner it would have gone a lot more smoothly.
We need to do some serious schooling about straightness and steering. It's not that she doesn't really go in the direction I point her, but a lot of times she kinda drifts sideways and ignores my outside rein. Not okay.
On the plus side, Pandora did not spook or try to stop at any fences. And we jumped a bunch of big, solid 2'9 ones. My partner and I ended up taking 3rd place, not too bad.
In the drawing afterwards, I won a free lesson from the trainer at the farm. So, I am going to go out there and take a XC lesson from her sometime soon and we can hopefully work through some of these frustrating problems.
At least I know that next month I have five days at Lily Glen, and that much intensive work should really help me out.