A Chilly German Horse

It's cold!! It hit a low of 18 degrees F last night and California is not used to being quite so cold. My arena froze, the horses' water froze, the arena sprinklers were frozen shut, and my horse, my German horse, was found curled up in his shavings with his little tootsies under his blanket. 

Note the shavings on his nose!

And this cuddly horse refused to get up for his ride this morning until I bribed him with cookies!

It was barely 30 degrees when I rode so I did his trail ride down the road with a fleece cooler on him (which is so obnoxious and bulky but effective). Tracey wants me to get a fleece quarter sheet so I can do the first half of his ride with that on to make sure his super buff ass muscles stay warm. I have a quarter sheet but it's just a rain sheet to keep him and my tack somewhat dry. So I'm ordering Rico an early Christmas present which will probably come in when this cold front leaves...


Despite the cold, Rico has been great the last couple days! I've been pretty much doing what we did in the lesson- lead changes on a circle, passage, and trot half pass. Super creative, I know, but my relentless practice is paying off already!

The lead changes are better, when I keep my body really still and then ask, we either get a VERY good change or no change. Rico doesn't like the changes on a circle... he got a bit frantic (which for Rico just means change-happy) today about it so I had to give him a few extra breaks.

The passage is MUCH better, I'm getting a lot more expression and a lot more reliability on my aid now that I'm being a little more patient and riding a slower tempo. I'm no longer worried that I won't be able to get the passage so that makes me a lot more relaxed about it! Phew. Rico still wants to canter instead of passage, but Tracey says that's normal and will go away as he gets more experience.

Today I didn't have time to do the half passes, but I FORCED my right leg to cease being a dead fish and clamped it onto his side. It felt SO awkward but I was happy that I did something, and honestly the half pass was better.


This weekend I might be moving Rico over to Woodmyst for the winter. I have finals next week so it'd be nice to not fight with watering/dragging/de-freezing my arena and being over there will take my mind off of how terrified I am of not doing well in my classes!

Accuracy

I can't believe how ridiculous finals are in graduate school. We have a MILLION things to do coming up to finals and I'm not actually sure how I'm going to get through all of this without becoming homicidal.

Currently I'm writing a proposal and preparing a presentation for perception. I still have to study for the cumulative final in that class too which is going to actually kill me. I also have exactly five thousand statistics projects to turn in (this figure may be an exaggeration, p < .01), plus the cumulative final for that class. Oh and I need to submit to IRB and finish my thesis proposal. Okay now that I write it out, that doesn't seem too bad. It FEELS like a lot though, ugh!

Piled Higher and Deeper is becoming more and more relevant to my life!

Catching Up

So I finally got around to putting pictures from this last week on my computer and editing a couple of them! I have hundreds of pictures to go through. Pictures from the dressage show, pictures from my graduation, pictures from the event, plus a few from around the ranch. Luckily I have today off to deal with them!

First, my graduation. I graduated from college recently! Woo! It didn't feel like a big deal because I'm going back to school this fall to get my Master's, but it was a big deal to my family so we celebrated. I dislike having my picture taken so they are taking longer to edit and prepare.

Graduating! My brother, mother, and myself.

The whole family!

In less exciting news, I'm still struggling with my saddle. It's getting to the point where I'm preparing myself financially to buy a new custom made saddle and will then sell the Albion. Before that though, my saddle fitter is supposed to give me a couple of borrowed saddles and come look at my saddle to see what is going on. I'm starting to feel like I should just start riding without a saddle. I'm sure Tracey won't mind me riding sans saddle in our lessons...

Speaking of our lessons, I can't take one for the next two weeks. I haven't been able to ride well enough this week to justify riding with her, and next week we'll have just shown and I want to take Rico on a trail ride that Tuesday. I am bummed, but not too much. We've already gone over the *hard* movements, like the half pass zig zag and the pirouettes. I was thinking about what I wanted to do at the lesson and I could only come up with checking the tempis (which have been perfect recently) and doing some walk pirouettes, extended walk, and maybe checking the shoulder-in to medium transition. So I'm thinking that those things are easily do-able on my own.

Anyway, the Woodside event was this past weekend! I was coaching and working up there, so I didn't have time to watch very much. We did course walk during the Advanced cross country, but I was wheeling the  course so I couldn't take very many pictures. When we finally stopped and watched a bit, I was almost to my car so was only able to get some galloping shots. Luckily, I'm becoming kind of obsessed with galloping shots.

Such cool horses at this level!

This horse was FULL of it! Props to his amazing rider.

Such a shiny horse

Woodside is so gorgeous

This week is fairly light, it's mostly just me riding horses for people and teaching a couple lessons here and there. Then on Saturday I have clients at the show, and Sunday I get to show!