Pushing Buttons

Saturday I taught a lesson and then spent the day with my SIL in the city. It was so fun! We went to Superbowl City, which, for two people who could not care less about football, was really awesome. The bay bridge had a light show and fireworks, so that was a blast. Then we packed onto the train like sardines and made it back to my town for tofu!

By Sunday, I was itching to ride a pony SO BADLY. I hadn't ridden in almost two weeks because of one thing or another. My initial pony riding plans were foiled by my friend's illness (she's fine), so I scheduled another lesson last minute and then headed down to ride Rico and Riot. I wanted to ride a pony, damnit.

I got to the ranch and saw that my mom was turning Rico and Riot out in the front yard to eat down some of the grass. It has better footing than the pastures and it means that no one has to mow. Nice!

He's pretty unkempt these days

I ruined Rico's day of eating by taking him out. But then I trusted him too much to stand ground tied and he got loose. He just trotted out to the grass and as I hurried over to grab him, I could tell that he was thinking about galloping around the property, but I caught him before he could act on his idea.

I just hopped on bareback with the hackamore, it was a little late to ride two before dark so there was no time to really put effort into tack.

The arena footing was surprisingly great and Rico felt as good as he's felt in a long time. He's been cooped up a bit, so I expected him to be stiff, but he really wasn't at all. He was actually super game... for Rico. So not putting in 100% effort to get out of work, probably just 90%.

We started at the trot but then almost immediately started the canter. I immediately got on his case for his laziness. He's proven time and time again that he isn't some old crippled horse, so he had better move when I asked him to. I need to get on with some spurs... and maybe a saddle next time. Instead I had my mud boots and the end of a pair of western reins. Good enough.

I groom my horses so thoroughly

We schooled EVERYTHING through Grand Prix for the first time in a long time. We started with a little piaffe and passage, then schooled some two tempis. The piaffe was pretty good and at first the passage was flat and terrible, but I motivated him and he gave me a lot more. The twos were foot perfect and he even dumped some ones (three in a row! whaaat) into them accidentally.

He gave me an ugly zig zag in trot and canter, but that was my fault. He got ahead of me in the half pass like he always does, and then kind of took advantage of me being a half step behind him. Woops. Not used to riding that anymore as all the horses I've done zig zags on recently have been pretty simple. We also did shoulder-in, which was probably the best shoulder-in I've felt in... exactly one year and two months.

I totally made him do canter pirouettes, just one full one in each direction. The left was downright GOOD- six solid steps right on the spot. Like I would have taken him into a show with that shit. The right was to be expected, he did it but it was hard to keep it small. Just like the good old days.

He kept offering passage after that, so we did some more of it, playing with the elevation in the collected trot with passage-trot-passage transitions. That's probably my favorite thing to do- work on the quality of the trot using passage. It's so fun to feel the difference in elevation and cadence. I didn't want to stop riding him ever. I love riding that horse (when he's actually excited to be ridden, which is almost never).

So dirty

It was SO fun to have this kind of ride on him, he's been so meh lately, which I thought was our norm now. I never thought I'd feel him do a canter pirouette again. Love it.

And the icing on the cake is knowing that I like riding TC so much more, I'm so excited to get him back (back to focusing on the positive after my kind of depressing post yesterday!).


Riot was next, and I just threw the same tack on him- bareback pad and a hackamore. The wind was howling (it even hailed on my drive home, craziness!) and Riot was spooky, but the most he ever does is just splay his feet and snort at stuff.

My main goal is to get him into running walk, which is so much easier now! I told my dad that he was doing a good job and he said that he watched my last ride and was practicing what I was doing- spiraling in and out, then doing transitions from walk to running walk trying to eliminate the pacing.

The pacing was only there at the beginning, so I worked on getting him to cover more ground (extended running walk? lol). It was a blast to ride him around, and we only had one big spook at the gate closing. I always forget how fun he is.

Love the green hills

Here's a question for you people- has anyone ever had a horse click (not grind) their teeth while being ridden? When Riot is in running walk, he seems really relaxed, but his teeth click. It's almost like he hangs his mouth open (in the hackamore- no bit in his mouth) to relax and the head nods (part of the running walk) so his teeth click together. Nothing I did seemed to help it- I couldn't figure out a pattern. He is absolutely not stressed or upset- he lives an extremely easy life here. It doesn't bug me that he does it and we probably won't try to stop it, I'm just curious if anyone else has had experience with it.