It rained all day tuesday. Not just rain, but thunder and lightning and wind. I got up at 6 to ride Isis (I was planning on being at the barn by 7), but it started to storm shortly after, so I didn't ride her. SO I cleaned my riding boots and Isis' bridle - And watched Dinosaur. Yep, I did. I like Disney movies, always have, always will. I rode Grady that evening. He was AWFUL. Just awful. I had to ride in the indoor. Birchbury's indoor is very large, open, and bright, but it's just not the same as riding outside. He pulled his typical stunt of picking a corner to be "scared of." I do a pretty good job of curbing that behavior now, so when he figured out that he wasn't winning he decided to buck, rear, and run sideways instead. This sort of behavior is pretty typical if he doesn't want to go somewhere. It's the same behavior he pulls going out to the XC sometimes. But this was BAD. We battled for probably a good half hour. Eventually he came around and went forward without balking at the corner, but over all it was just not a good ride. But I'm glad that I "won."
I rode Isis yesterday morning and she was ok, but the footing was pretty bad after the rain. It was either too deep or too slippery, so the quality of our work wasn't as good as I would have liked it to be.
I had a jumping lesson on Grady and that went pretty well. It was in the indoor since the footing was so bad outside, and we did the dreaded "circle exercise." Grady was quite confused by it and was NOT very smooth, but he was pretty well behaved the whole time. The exercise is where you have four ground poles and/or jumps equally spaced on a circle. Sound easy? IT'S NOT!! It's hard enough on Sackett because I have to think so hard to get the striding equal and the distances correct. On Grady it was next to impossible. Thankfully, Rocky didn't even have me worry about striding; it was just my job to ride a circle and let Grady figure it out. We had jumps where he took off WAY too long, jumps that he came in so tight he had to take launching bunny hops, and several jumps where he simply crashed through them. He was completely bamboozled by the exercise, and he was having a very hard time both mentally and physically... And that's good! It's VERY tiring (for both of us) and by the end of the lesson I could tell that he was really struggling. It's so hard because you're constantly turning at the same time you're trying to jump. It's great for him!
I've been doing LOTS of homework. I'm swamped... SO I'm off to do more!
2 comments:
You are right. The circle exercise is hard! Even if you only have two jumps on opposite sides of the circle, it's hard. So having all four is especially challenging. I bet it was good for Grady to work so hard and have to think and be very physical. Is there less naughtiness that way? Hope you get some nice weather soon. I love fall in Minnesota!
Grady sounds hormonal, sheesh! Sophie was really hormonal today (in heat) and we did an exercise kind of like with the circle exercise, in that we used props to give her something else to focus on and it was hard for me to keep track of everything!
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