Knew It

Another day another weekend out of town with me being the one person who seems to not freak the fuck out about getting through TSA as fast as possible. Why not just bend over and take your shoes off? How does hopping and knocking into me make the whole ordeal go faster?

But it's all worth it because the bay area was insanely hot over this last weekend. We're talking 114 degrees where TC lives (it normally doesn't get hotter than the mid-90s). TC is not the biggest fan of heat. He does best when it's about 70 degrees and has a slight breeze. So I was glad that he got to just sit in his paddock and melt all weekend.

I rode him Wednesday evening and he was quite good. The first day back into work after a few days off is always pretty good. Yesterday though, he came out like a fire breathing dragon. I generally like this ride- he's much more forward and into the bridle, which is a nice change from the last month or two where he's been a bit on the quiet side at home. But this ride is always accompanied by at least one bolt, so I was prepared.

Random old pictures, I gotta get some more media

We began with some stretchy trot, something he's really been enjoying starting off with lately. I'm glad, because it gives me then two opportunities to work on it (since we always end with stretchy trot). It's been our most hit or miss movement outside the canter, earning anywhere from a 6 to an 8.5.

The trot work felt good, though I felt myself wanting to put more bend in the neck than in the body for some reason. So I worked on bringing him over straight and then adding bend. I was told once to think of the horse like a crooked pipe cleaner. If you want to create a uniform bend in the pipe cleaner, the first step is to straighten it, then bend it again. It makes sense since my perspective was way off with the bend, clearly, so starting from straight worked much better than trying to piece together bend with a crooked horse.

We played a bit with the leg yields too, I'm trying to use them to improve the throughness in the trot during warm up. It's so funny how movements that used to be hard for us are turning into movements that we use during warm up.

I've switched my evening rides to mornings due to traffic and I
don't know which I prefer. I like evenings because I get more time
and it's more peaceful, but ugh I hate riding in the dark

Once as we were situated at the trot, we went into canter. After a few days off, the canter isn't always the best, and it wasn't. It felt a little bit flat and crooked, so we worked on that at first. Once as I figured out how to sit on my right seat bone, things were much better, so it goes. I mostly wanted to work on improving the collection, though that's when TC had other plans, so he ran off after passing a sprinkler he'd been totally fine with the entire ride until then. Ugh I knew it was coming, but that doesn't make it any more fun to ride.

This bolt was pretty bad, he truly felt like he was going to fall over as he was going, so I just waited it out and then laid into him about it. Probably poor timing since the time to do that is right after it happened. I put him into canter and put more pressure on him and we got a REALLY great collected canter. He still hits a wall (vs Rico who, by the end, and I know he was a GP horse, felt like he could collect so much that he'd canter backwards), but there's a lot more of a spectrum of stride length in there now than there ever has been.

The counter canter is feeling good still, though it still feels a tiny bit fragile. I like to get the counter canter to the point where it feels just as rideable as the true canter, and TC isn't there yet. He's still slightly uncomfortable in it and loses a bit of jump. That's not too surprising though. So we worked on that and a few simple changes.

Time to get back to the trainer's barn for a lesson

I'm really enjoying the pressure being off for horse shows. This weekend we'll be hopefully going on a trail ride, then next weekend hopefully grabbing a lesson with my regular trainer. I haven't seen her since July, because my August lesson was with Jeremy. I'm really eager to step back to First with her and see what she thinks of everything from there.

Speaking of First, I have some good news! I saw they redid the footing in the dressage court arena this last weekend! I'm SO excited to start riding in there all the time. Fingers crossed the court gets in there soon and then we're all test riding all the time. Time to ride that First 3 test for the first time, and maybe look at some Second 1 movements within the court!