Miners Farm

Well, my lesson on Grady yesterday went well. He tried his sideways spooky, leapy, reary junk several times, but we were able to work through it. Rocky put a martingale on Grady that prevented him from whipping his head down as far as he normally would and that made it more difficult for him to spin down and to the side. I've never seen a martingale like that before, it actually is meant to prevent the horse from putting his head to LOW instead of too high. We worked over ground poles, small cross rails, and a pile of ground poles that Grady thought was VERY scary. The encouraging thing though is that once he got over it once he was willing to go over it again.

Last evening I rode Isis and she was back to her old, brilliant self. Actually, the ride was pretty much flawless, although I didn't push her. I simply did walk/trot/canter, simple changes, stretchy trot etc. Nothing difficult. I'm happy that she's back on form. I rode her again this evening and she was quite good again. I pushed her harder, working on our leg yielding and over all quality. Like I've said before, Isis leg yields flawlessly off my left leg, but tends to try and pop her left shoulder out when leg yielding off the right leg. So we practiced our leg yielding and she leg yielded straight, rhythmically, and correctly off my right leg after a bit of corrective work. So I'm happy with her. Tomorrow I plan to ride her out in a grassy field. It got mown last week so it's actually rideable now.

This morning I took Sackett and went with Rocky and several other boarders to Miners Farm to school XC fences. The farm was quite extravagent, but they only have beginner novice and novice fences, which is fine since that's all I'm capable of right now anyways!! Most other people brought young horses. I was in the second group of people that rode, and I watched the first group fairly closely so I'd get a feel for the course. I also took some pictures, but I'm horrid at timing over jumps. The first group was Jill riding her 4 year old Theroughbred (4th time doing XC) and Mary riding her horse Lola. I feel terrible because I can't remember Jill's horse's name. It's something like Freya or Felda or something like that. Anyways, I also jumped the fences shown in the pictures. The schooling went pretty good. I was with Missy and Avery. I started out pretty good but was a little hairy with my distances at first. By the end of our lesson though I was really cooking. The last jumps we did were also the biggest jumps (novice), and they felt the easiest and most controled. Rocky also said they looked very nice!!

Mary and Lola over a rock wall

Mary and Lola (almost) over a coop

Jill and her young horse over a roll top

Other people rode after our group. Jill had also brought her horse Einstein to school prelim stadium. Rocky recruited several of us to work the fences and she told us where to set the poles. We were confused because the height just didn't seem right but we went with it anyways. Jill was having some mental issues with how large the jumps looked, but she was really doing well and after some successful jumping Rocky said "ok Jill, we're going to lower the jumps to prelim now. You were jumping Intermediate." It was a classic moment, all of us jump people were like "THAT'S why we thought the jumps looked high!!" Jill was just flabergasted. It was great!

After we got home I got Grady and tried my Wintec on him. My County is too small from him, which is annoying. I have my Wintec absolutely as wide as it goes and it's still a wee bit tight on him, although not as bad as the County. I've been suspecting that the County doesn't fit for several months, but my old trainer kept telling me it did. I asked Rocky to check it yesterday and it took her about 10 seconds to proclaim that it IS indeed too small. I'm thinking that I might sell my County and use that money to buy a couple more Wintec saddles. I actually really like Wintec saddles, and amazingly I like the cheapest ones best. I don't like that fake suede stuff, so I bought a Wintec 500 and I really like it. I'm going to call a friend of mine that works at an english tack store and see if they have one of those super wide Wintecs to try on Grady...

Anyways, my ride on Grady was great! I went out to the XC course with Lynn. We began by just walking around, and eventually began to trot and canter. I let Grady follow Lynn's horse Tuesday to start, and that helped him with his confidence. He loosened up and wasn't so tense. After following her for awhile I asked him to go off by himself which made him mad. We had a rather serious discussion about that (Lynn: "Wow, he can have some attitude!!") and Grady gave in. After riding him around seperate from Tuesday for a bit, we went out into a large field and galloped around the whole field both ways. It was the first time I have EVER rode Grady where I felt like he was having fun. We were seriously booking it, pretty much going as fast as Grady was willing to. He really seemed to have fun, and I bet it's the first time in his life that he's been galloped in the open. I doubt he's been galloped at all really. He loved it. Not to mention that we did our first flying change!! He picked up the right lead going left, and I was asking him to slow down to do a simple change. He didn't want to slow down and so was going into a shorter, more collected canter rather than breaking to trot. When I felt this I thought, "hmmm, this seems like the perfect canter for a flying change!" I put my leg back and BAM, he switched absolutely clean. I'm very proud of him!!!