More Tolerant

This weekend was horse-packed! It was my first one in quite a while where it was basically just non-stop horse things. I really like these weekends, except that today is Monday and I bet I feel REALLY TIRED and probably a little sick. So much sun, so many ponies, so much talking.

Got to see this view again! This is from last time though

 On Friday, I had a really excellent ride on TC. He has been so good lately, really ON when it comes to the level of work I want him to be doing right now and a lot more forgiving of me. I've been working to make him a little more tolerant of a horse.

It's not that he's been intolerant necessarily, but I realized in the last few months that I've been creating a horse who doesn't really take a joke very well because I haven't been telling him too many. I've been avoiding pushing myself on days that I'm not feeling like I'm riding 100% and really, he's been at a low enough level where I really don't make too many mistakes anymore. Well, not anymore as we start schooling Second. It's easy to not fuck up Training and First (I mean it's easy to fuck up any level of riding, but it's easier to not fuck up those levels vs Second. Second is very fuck-up-able).

So recently rather than avoiding any issues when I just plain feel like I'm not riding well, I just sort of keep going and tell him "sorry dude, but one day you'll be owned by someone who rides worse than I do so if I get stuck behind the motion because I'm tired and didn't feel like engaging my core in that transition, oh well, figure your shit out."

You figuring your shit out, TC?

The result has been really interesting because while he's definitely feeling a lot easier to ride and more tolerant of me riding (like when I got back from the east coast a bit ago and rode him at 7:30pm aka 10:30pm and I was basically asleep, he was fine. Not great, but no protests), he's also been much less averse to being pushed to do the hard stuff. And he's a lot more forgiving of me when I get annoyed with him when he spooks. He sorta just goes "ohhhkay sorry" and gets back to work instead of using me getting annoyed at him as a good way to jump into a meltdown.

Basically he's just really understanding his job and doesn't depend on me so much to do it. And that's a great feeling!

So this weekend I decided to reward that behavior with a trail ride and a day off. I don't want to get into Saturday's trail ride yet, because as of writing this post, I'm really scared of whether TC is sound or not. He was cleared for hills nearly a year ago and has been mostly in regular work since then. He's very fit. And we only did one little trot on a piece of flatish ground. Other than that just walking. But still, I'm paranoid.

Favorite tree

Saturday morning, before the trail ride, I zipped up to the horse park to watch Kate's crew do the derby! Olivia and David were also there so I got to see their jumping rounds (missed dressage, boo). Both they and Kate's students did super well!

I was able to walk the course and it was a super cool set up. It was about half of the regular cross country course slightly out of order, with show jumping fences in between. It looked so fun. I'll let Olivia write up how she and David did, but I feel like I fall for mustangs more and more every time I hang out with Eugene and Levi. And watching them eat up that course definitely made me want a mustang for my next horse!


After the derby I went to do my trail ride, and then on Sunday I taught a clinic! Will post about those later, for now (Sunday night), I need to sleep.